Page:What will he do with it.djvu/777

Rh the cares of a mother. She could not bear to part with it; she resolved to adopt it as her own. The knowledge of Mrs. Vance's circumstances—the idea that the orphan, to herself a blessing, would be an unwelcome incumbrance to its own relations—removed every scruple from a mind unaccustomed to suffer reflection to stand in the way of an impulse. She wrote to Mrs. Vance that the child was dead. She trusted that her letter would suffice, without other evidence, to relations so poor, and who could have no suspicion of any interest to deceive them. Her trust was well founded. Mrs. Vance and the boy Frank, whose full confidence and gratitude had been already secured to their correspondent for her kind offices to the young parents, accepted, without a demur or a question, the news that the infant was no more. The singer moved on to the next town at which she was professionally engaged. The infant, hitherto brought up by hand, became ailing. The medical adviser called in recommended the natural food, and found, in a village close by, the nurse to whom, a little time before, Jasper Losely had consigned his own daughter. The latter died; the nurse then removed to Paris, to reside with the singer, who had obtained a lucrative appointment at one of the metropolitan theaters. In less than two years the singer herself fell a victim to a prevailing epidemic. She had lived without thought of the morrow; her debts exceeded her means; her effects were sold. The nurse who had meanwhile become a widow, came for advice and refuge to her sister, who was in the service of Gabrielle Desmarets. Gabrielle being naturally appealed to, saw the infant, heard the story, looked into the statement which, by way of confession, the singer had drawn up, and signed, in a notary's presence, before she died; looked into the letters from Mrs. Vance, and the school-boy scrawls from Frank, both to the singer and to the child's parents, which the actress had carefully preserved; convinced herself of the poverty and obscurity of the infant's natural guardians and next of kin; and said to Jasper, who was just dissipating the fortune handed over to him as survivor of his wife and child, "There is what, if well managed, may retain your hold on a rich father-in-law, when all else has failed. You have but to say that this infant is his grandchild; the nurse we can easily bribe, or persuade to confirm the tale. I, whom he already knows as that respectable baroness, your Matilda's friend, can give to the story some probable touches. The lone, childish man must rejoice to think that a tie is left to him. The infant is exquisitely pretty; her face will plead for her. His heart will favor the idea too much to make him very rigorous in his investigations.