All the jewellery and dresses, and everything that Miss Ludington
has given me, I have left behind, except the clothes I had to have to go
away in, and these I will return as soon as I get where I am going. Oh,
my poor Paul! I am no more Ida Ludington than you are. How could you ever
believe such a thing? But let me tell my shameful story in order. Perhaps
it was not so strange that you were deceived. I think any one might have
been who held the belief you did at the outset.
"I am Ida Slater, Mrs. Slater's daughter, whom she named after Miss
Ludington, because she thought her name so pretty when they went to
school together as children in Hilton. I was born in Hilton twenty-three
years ago, several years after Miss Ludington left the village. My father
is Mr. Slater, of course, but he is the person you know as Dr. Hull,
which is an assumed name. Mrs. Legrand, who is no more dead than you are,
is a sister of my father. Her husband is dead, and father acts as her
manager, and mother helps about the seances, and does what she can in any
way to bring a little money.
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