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"You will recall that I would have per Perhaps it was spite which interposed later on At least, be charitable enough to call it that Clegg has been here to see me He says you are bound toti her asyou up altogether Don't you coain into her eyes after what she saw in this accursed prison She was born in wedlock The story is not a long one Elias Droom knows the names of her father and mother, but I am confident that he does not know all of the circumstances For once, I was too shrewd for his in connection with Jane Cable is a shameful one, and I cannot hope for pardon, either from you or from her"

Here he related, as concisely as possible, the incidents attending Mrs Cable's first visit to his office and the subsequent adoption of the babe

"I knew that there ealth and power behind the round Unknown to Mrs Cable, I began investigations of my own She had made little or no effort to discover the parents of the child She could have had no purpose in doing so, I'll adations at the Foundlings' Home, at the health office, at certain unsavory hospitals and in other channels of possibility] At last, I found the doctor, and then the nurse After that, it was easy to unearth the records of a child's birth and of a mother's death--all in New York City Droo the naiven to you He did not know that they had been married nearly two years prior to the birth of the child It was a clandestineHe was then but little e--a wild, ruthless, overbearing, heartless scoundrel, who had more money but a reat and, I believe, respected gentle on his knees before ad, my son, I am rather proud of that hour with hi scion of a wealthy house had lost his insecure heart to the daughter of a real aristocrat I say real, because her father was a pure Knickerbocker of the old school He was, naturally, as poor as poverty itself With his beautiful daughter he was living in lower New York--barely subsisting, I h the upstairs lodgers in the old ho the traditions of her blood, while her father, sick and feeble, brooded over the days when he was a king in Babylon The handsome, ard lover came into her life when she was nineteen They were married secretly in the city of Boston