"Dear mistress, can you hear me? Here is your baby back again."
They had taken a desperate chance when all hope seemed lost.
By the advice of the consulting physicians, another child had been substituted for the stolen one, and, at its helpless cry, hope crept back to the mother's breaking heart; the rushing waves ceased to moan in her ears, silenced by that little piping voice, and the sinking life was rallied.
She lived, and the babe grew and throve in its luxurious surroundings, and the mother worshiped it. No one ever dared tell her the truth—that it was not her own infant that had been restored to her arms, but a little foundling. No other child ever came to rival it in Mrs. Clarke's love, and it was this fact alone that sealed her husband's lips to the cruel secret that ached at his heart. He feared the effect of the truth on his delicate wife, taking every precaution to keep her in ignorance, even to moving away from his own home, and settling in a distant place.
Though he never relaxed his efforts to find his lost child, the years slipped away in a hopeless quest, and Roma, the adopted girl, grew eighteen years old, and her beauty and her prospects brought her many suitors.
In his heart Mr. Clarke hoped the girl would make an early marriage, for he was tired of living a lie, pretending to love her as a daughter to deceive his wife, while an aching void in his own heart was always yearning for his own lost darling.
CHAPTER II.
FATE IS ABOVE US ALL.
It was six o'clock by all the watches and clocks at Stonecliff, and the girls at Miss Bray's dressmaking establishment hastily put up their work and were starting for home, chattering like a flock of magpies, when their employer called after them testily:
"Say, girls, one of you will have to take this bundle up to Cliffdene. Miss Clarke wanted it very particularly to wear to-night. Liane Lester, she lives nearer to you than any of the others. You take it."
Liane Lester would have liked to protest, but she did not dare. With a decided pout of her rosy lips, she took the box with Miss Clarke's new silk cape and hurried to overtake Dolly Dorr, the only girl who was going her way.
"What a shame to have to carry boxes along the village street late in the afternoon when every one is out walking! I think Miss Bray ought to keep a servant to fetch and carry!" cried Dolly indignantly. "Oh, look, Liane! There's that handsome Jesse Devereaux standing on the post-office steps! Shouldn't you like to flirt with him? Let's saunter slowly past so that he may notice us!"
"I don't want him to notice me! Granny says that harm always comes of rich men noticing poor girls. Come, Dolly, let us avoid him by crossing the street."
Suiting the action to the word, Liane Lester turned quickly from her friend and sped toward the crossing.
But, alas, fate is above us all!
Her haste precipitated what she strove to avoid.
Drawing the veil down quickly over her rosy face, the frolicsome wind caught the bit of blue gossamer and whirled it back toward the sidewalk. Jesse Devereaux gave chase, captured the veil, and flew after the girl.
She had gained the pavement, and was hurrying on, when she heard him at her side, panting, as he said:
"I beg pardon—your veil!"
A white hand was thrust in front of her, holding the bit of blue gauze, and she had to stop.
"I thank you," she murmured, taking it from his hand and raising her eyes shyly to his face—the brilliant, handsome face that had haunted many a young girl's dreams.
The dazzling dark eyes were fixed eagerly on her lovely face, and his red lips parted in a smile that showed pearly-white teeth as he exclaimed gayly:
"Old Boreas was jealous of your hiding such a face, and whisked your veil away, but out of mercy to mankind I concluded to return it."
"Thank you, very much!" she answered again, and was turning away when Dolly Dorr rushed across the street, breathless with eagerness.
"How do you do, Mr. Devereaux?" she cried gayly, having been introduced to him at a church festival the evening before.
"Ah, Miss——" he hesitated, as he lifted his hat, and she twittered:
"Miss Dorr; we met at the festival last night, you know. And this is my chum, Liane Lester."
"Charmed," he exclaimed, while his radiant black eyes beamed on Liane's face, and he stepped along by Dolly's side as she placed herself between them, intent on a flirtation.
"May I share your walk?" he asked, and Dolly gave an eager assent, secretly wishing her girl friend a mile away.
But as she could not manage this, she proceeded to monopolize the conversation—an easy task, for Liane walked along silent and ill at ease, "for all the world," thought the lively Dolly to herself, "like a tongue-tied little schoolgirl."
No wonder Liane was demure and frightened, dreading to get a scolding from granny if Jesse Devereaux walked with them as far as her home.
Liane lived alone, in pinching poverty, with a feeble old grandmother, who was too old to work for herself, and needed Liane's wages to keep life in her old bones; so she was always dreading that the girl's beauty would win her a husband who would pack the old woman off to the poorhouse as an incumbrance.
She kept Liane illy dressed and hard worked, and never permitted her to have a beau. Marriage was a failure, she said.
"What was the use of marrying a poor man, to work your fingers to the bone for him?" she exclaimed scornfully.
"But one might marry rich," suggested innocent Liane.
"Rich men marry rich girls, and if they ever notice a poor girl, she mostly comes to grief by it. Don't never let me catch you flirting with any young man, or I'll make you sorry!" granny answered viciously.
She had not made her sorry yet, for the girl had obeyed her orders, although her beauty would have brought her a score of lovers had she smiled on their advances, but Liane had not seen any man yet for whom she would have risked one of granny's beatings.
How would it be now, when her young heart was beating violently at the glances of a pair of thrilling dark eyes, and the tones of a rich, musical voice, when her face burned and her hands trembled with exquisite ecstasy?
Old Boreas, why did you whisk her veil away and show Jesse Devereaux that enchanting young face, so rosy and dimpled, with large, shy eyes like purple pansies, golden-hearted, with rims of jet, so dark the arched brows and fringed lashes, while the little head was covered with silky waves of thick, shining chestnut hair? What would be the outcome of this fateful meeting?
Sure enough, as they came in sight of Liane's humble home, there was granny's grizzled head peeping from the window, and, with an incoherent good evening to her companions, Liane darted inside the gate, hurrying into the house.
But at the very threshold the old woman met her with a snarl of rage, slapping her in the face with a skinny, clawlike hand as she vociferated:
"Take that for disobeying me, girl! Walking out with that handsome dude, after all my warnings!"
"Oh, granny, please don't be so cruel, striking me for nothing! I'm too big a girl to be beaten now!" pleaded Liane, sinking into a chair, the crimson lines standing out vividly on her white cheeks, while indignant tears started into her large, pathetic eyes.
But her humility did not placate the cruel old hag, who continued to glare at her victim, snarling irascibly.
"Too big, eh?" she cried; "well, I'll show you, miss, the next time I see you