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Through Madaline's bounty she was able to move from her close lodgings in town to a pretty cottage in the country Then she had a glimpse of content. After a time her heart yearned to see the daughter of her adoption, the one sunbeam of her life, and she wrote to that effect.
"And you, Philippa you will extend to my beloved wife the friendship and affection that you have given to me?" "Yes," she replied, absently. "Continue to be her fairy-godmother. There is no friend who can do as you can do. You will be Madaline's sheet-anchor and great hope." She turned away with a shudder.
Then, as the years passed on, it was agreed that she would never be found, that she must be dead. The earl's truest friends advised him to marry again. After years of bitter disappointment, of anguish and suspense, of unutterable sorrow and despair, he resigned himself to the entire loss of Madaline's child.
Madaline's answer touched him. She assured him that there was no fear that her mother was to be implicitly trusted. She told him also how entirely she had kept the secret of his separation from her, lest it should add to her mother's trouble. "She will know now that I do not live with you, that I never see you, that we are as strangers, but she will never know the reason." He was deeply moved.
His whole soul was wrapped in the one idea that he was to see his child again Madaline's child the little babe he had held in his arms, whose little face he had bedewed with tears his own child the daughter he had lost for long years and had tried so hard to find.
Knowing nothing of her father's rank or position, she had flattered herself into believing that she had been Madaline's best friend in childhood. Now there came to her a terrible doubt. What if she had stood in Madaline's light, instead of being her friend?
So it was arranged; and there were few happier women than Margaret Dornham when she heard the news. "I thought," she sobbed, in a broken voice, "that I should never be forgiven; and now I find that I am to be always near to the child for whose love I would have sacrificed the world." Lord Mountdean insisted on the fullest publicity being given to Madaline's abduction.
The three years had almost elapsed; the doctor was dead, and had left nothing behind him that could give any clew to Madaline's identity, and in a short time she trembled to think how short the father would come to claim his child, and she would lose her. When she thought of that, Margaret Dornham clung to the little one in a passion of despair.
He did not think to ask where his daughter lived, if she was married or single, what she was doing or anything else; his one thought was that he had found her found her, never to lose her again. He sat with his face shaded by his hand during the whole of the drive, thanking Heaven that he had found Madaline's child.
It was just the place for lovers' dreams a shining sea, golden sands, white cliffs with little nooks and bays, pretty and shaded walks on the hill-top. Madaline's great happiness was delightful to see. The fair face grew radiant in its loveliness; the blue eyes shone brightly.
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