She would rather you should be
poor, she said, than to be brought up by him, and as a means of
eluding discovery, she said you should not bear his name, and with
her dying tears she baptised you Edith Hastings. After her decease
Marie wrote to him that both of you were dead, and he came on at
once, seemed very penitent and sorry when it was too late."
"Where was his home?" Edith asked eagerly; and Richard replied,
"That is one thing I neglected to enquire, but when I met him in
Europe I had the impression that it was in one of the Western or
South-western states."
"Is he still alive?" Edith asked again, a daughter's love slowly
gathering in her heart in spite of the father's cruelty to the
mother.
"No," returned Richard. "Marie, who kept sight of his movements,
wrote to her sister some years since that he was dead, though when
he died, or how, Mrs. Jamieson did not know. She, too, was ill
when he came to her house, and consequently never saw him
herself."
"And the Asylum--how came I there?" said Edith; and Richard
replied,
"It seems your mother was an orphan, and had no near relatives to
whom you could be sent, and as Marie was then too poor and
dependent to support you she placed you in the Asylum as Edith
Hastings, visiting you occasionally until she went back to France,
her native country.
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