"Upon your mother's grave I have wept that sin away, and I know I am forgiven as well as if her own soft voice had told me so. I loved your father, Maude, and this was my great error. He was a distant relative of your mother, whom he always called his cousin. He visited her often, for he was a college student, and ere I was aware of it, I loved him, oh, so madly, vainly fancying my affection was returned. He was bashful, I thought, for he was not then twenty-one, and by way of rousing him to action. I trifled with another--with Dr. Kennedy," and she uttered the name spitefully, as if it were even now hateful to her.
"I know it--I know it," returned Maude, "he told me that when he first talked with me of you, but I did not suppose the dark-eyed student was my father."
"It was none other," said Mrs. Kennedy, "and you can form some conception of my love for him, when I tell you that it has never died away, but is as fresh within my heart this night as when I walked with him upon the College Green and he Called me 'Cousin Maude,' for he gave me that name because of my fondness for Matty, and he sealed it with a kiss. Matty was present at that time, and had I not been blind I should have seen how his whole soul was bound up in her, even while kissing me. I regarded her as a child, and so she was; but men sometimes love children, you know. When she was fifteen, she left New Haven. I, too, had ceased to be a schoolgirl, but I still remained in the city and wrote to her regularly, until at last your father came to me, and with the light of a great joy shining all over his face, told me she was to be his bride on her sixteenth birthday. She would have written it herself, he said, only she was a bashful little creature, and would rather he should tell me. I know not what I did, for the blow was sudden, and took my senses away. He had been so kind to me of late--had visited me so often, that my heart was full of hope. But it was all gone now.
Matty Reed was preferred to me, and while my Spanish blood boiled at the fancied indignity, I said many a harsh thing of her--I called her designing, deceitful, and false; and then in my frenzy quitted the room. I never saw Harry, again, for he left the city next morning; but to my dying hour I shall not forget the expression of his face when I talked to him of Matty. Turn away, Maude, turn away! for there is the same look now upon your face. But I have repented of that act, though not till years after. I tore up Mattie's letters. I. said I would burn the soft brown tress--"
"Oh, woman, woman! you did not burn my mother's hair!" and with a shudder Maude unwound the soft, white arm which so closely encircled her.
"No, Maude, no. I couldn't. It would not leave my fingers, but coiled around them with a loving grasp. I have it now, and esteem it my choicest treasure. When I heard that you were born, my heart softened toward the young girl. Mother and I wrote, asking that Harry's child might be called for me. I did not disguise my love for him, and I said it would be some consolation to know that his daughter bore my name. My letter did not reach them until you had been baptized Matilda, which was the name of your mother and grandmother, but to prove their goodness, they ever after called you Maude."
"Then I was named for you;" and Maude Remington came back to the embrace of Maude Glendower, who, kissing, her white brow, continued:
