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 the curtain to admit the moonlight more freely. She gazed intently on her face.

"Then, if you love me," said she, speaking quickly, with an altered voice: "if you feel as if—to use your own words—you could 'grow to my heart,' it will be neither shock nor pain for you to know that that heart is the source whence yours was filled; that from my veins issued the tide which flows in yours; that you are mine—my daughter—my own child."

"Mrs. Pryor!"

"My own child!"

"That is—that means—you have adopted me?"

"It means that, if I have given you nothing else, I at least gave you life; that I bore you—nursed you; that I am your true mother: no other woman can claim the title—it is mine."

"But Mrs. James Helstone—but my father's wife, whom I do not remember ever to have seen, she is my mother?"

"She is your mother: James Helstone was my husband. I say you are mine. I have proved it. I thought perhaps you were all his, which would have been a cruel dispensation for me: I find it is not so. God permitted me to be the parent of my child's mind: it belongs to me: it is my property—my right. These features are James's own. He had a fine face when he was young, and not altered by error. Papa, my darling, gave you your blue eyes and soft brown hair: he gave you the oval