Suppose you
brought this child home with you----"
"What do you mean?" interrupted Ida, with dilating eyes. "Am I----"
"You are to that woman," broke in Paul, indicating Miss Ludington, "what
the child would have been to you. You are bound to her by the same tie by
which that little girl would have been bound to you. She remembers and
loves you as you would remember and love that child; but you do not know
her any more than that child would know you. You both share the name of
Ida Ludington, according to the usage of men as to names; but I think
there is no danger of your being confounded with each other, either in
your own eyes or those of lookers-on."
Ida had at last comprehended. The piercing look, expressive of mingled
attraction and repulsion, which she fixed upon Miss Ludington, left no
doubt of that. It implied alarm, mistrust, and something that was almost
defiance, yet with hints of a possible tenderness.
It was such a look as a daughter, stolen from her cradle and grown to
maidenhood among strangers, might fix upon the woman claiming to be her
mother, except that not only was Miss Ludington a stranger to Ida, but
the relation which she claimed to sustain to her was one that had never
before been realized between living persons on earth, however it might
be, in heaven.
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