into the house together. “George has been forging my name.”
“Impossible!” exclaimed Mrs. Dinneford.
“I wish it were,” replied Mr. Dinneford, sadly; “but, alas! it is too true. I have just returned from the Fourth National Bank. They have a note for three thousand dollars, bearing my signature. It is drawn to the order of George Granger, and endorsed by him. The note is a forgery.”
Mrs. Dinneford became almost wild with excitement. Her fair face grew purple. Her eyes shone with a fierce light.
“Have you had him arrested?” she asked.
“Oh no, no, no!” Mr. Dinneford answered. “For poor Edith's sake, if for nothing else, this dreadful business must be kept secret. I will take up the note when due, and the public need be none the wiser.”
“If,” said Mrs. Dinneford, “he has forged your name once, he has, in all probability, done it again and again. No, no; the thing can't be hushed up, and it must not be. Is he less a thief and a robber because he is our son-in-law? My daughter the wife of a forger! Great heavens! has it come to this Mr. Dinneford?” she added, after a pause, and with intense bitterness and rejection in her voice. “The die is cast! Never again, if I can prevent it, shall that scoundrel cross our threshold. Let the law have its course. It is a crime to conceal crime.”
“It will kill our poor child!” answered Mr. Dinneford in a broken voice.
“Death is better than the degradation of living with a criminal,” replied his wife. “I say it solemnly, and I mean it; the die is cast! Come what will, George Granger stands now and for ever on the outside! Go at once and give information to the bank officers. If you do not, I will.”
With a heavy heart Mr. Dinneford returned to the bank and informed the president that the note in question was a forgery. He had been gone from home a little over half an hour, when Granger, who had come to ask him about the three notes given him that morning by Freeling, put his key in the door, and found, a little to his surprise, that the latch was down. He rang the bell, and in a few moments the servant appeared. Granger was about passing in, when the man said, respectfully but firmly, as he held the door partly closed,
“My orders are not to let you come in.”
“Who gave you those orders?” demanded Granger, turning white.
“Mrs. Dinneford.”
“I wish to see Mr. Dinneford, and I must see him immediately.”
“Mr. Dinneford is not at home,” answered the servant.
“Shut that door instantly!”
It was the voice of Mrs. Dinneford, speaking from within. Granger heard it; in the next moment the door was shut in his face.
The young man hardly knew how he got back to the store. On his arrival he found himself under arrest, charged with forgery, and with fresh evidence of the crime on his person in the three notes received that morning from his partner, who denied all knowledge of their existence, and appeared as a witness against him at the hearing before a magistrate. Granger was held to bail to answer the charge at the next term of court.
It would have been impossible to keep all this from Edith, even if there had been a purpose to do so. Mrs. Dinneford chose to break the dreadful news at her own time and in her own way. The shock was fearful. On the night that followed her baby was born.
CHAPTER III.
“IT is a splendid boy,” said the nurse as she came in with the new-born baby in her arms, “and perfect as a bit of sculpture. Just look at that hand.”
“Faugh!” ejaculated Mrs. Dinneford, to whom this was addressed. Her countenance expressed disgust. She turned her head away. “Hide the thing from my sight!” she added, angrily. “Cover it up! smother it if you will!”
“You are still determined?” said the nurse.
“Determined, Mrs. Bray; I am not the woman to look back when I have once resolved. You know me.” Mrs. Dinneford said this passionately.
The two women were silent for a little while. Mrs. Bray, the nurse, kept her face partly turned from Mrs. Dinneford. She was a short, dry, wiry little woman, with French features, a sallow complexion and very black eyes.
The doctor looked in. Mrs. Dinneford went quickly to the door, and putting her hand on his arm, pressed him back, going out into the entry with him and closing the door behind them. They talked for a short time very earnestly.
“The whole thing is wrong,” said the doctor as he turned to go, “and I will not be answerable for the consequences.”
“No one will require them at your hand, Doctor Radcliffe,” replied Mrs. Dinneford. “Do the best you can for Edith. As for the rest, know nothing, say nothing. You understand.”
Doctor Burt Radcliffe had a large practice among rich and fashionable people. He had learned to be very considerate of their weaknesses, peculiarities and moral obliquities. His business was to doctor them when sick, to humor them when they only thought themselves sick, and to get the largest possible fees for his, services. A great deal came under his observation that he did not care to see, and of which he saw as little as possible. From policy he had learned to be reticent. He held family secrets enough to make, in the hands of a skillful writer, more than a dozen romances of the saddest and most exciting character.
Mrs. Dinneford knew him thoroughly, and just how far to trust him. “Know nothing, say nothing” was a good maxim in the case, and so she divulged only the fact that the baby was to be cast adrift. His weak remonstrance might as well not have been spoken, and he knew it.
While this brief interview was in progress, Nurse Bray sat with the baby on her lap. She had taken the soft little hands into her own; and evil and cruel though she was, an impulse of tenderness flowed into her heart from the angels who were present with the innocent child. It grew lovely in her eyes. Its helplessness stirred in her a latent instinct of protection. “No no, it must not be,” she was saying to herself, when the door opened and Mrs. Dinneford came back.
Mrs. Bray did not lift her head, but sat looking down at the baby and toying with its hands.
“Pshaw!” ejaculated Mrs. Dinneford, in angry disgust, as she noticed this manifestation of interest. “Bundle the thing up and throw into that basket. Is the woman down stairs?”
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Bray as she slowly drew a light blanket over the baby.
“Very well. Put it in the basket, and let her take it away.”
“She is not a good woman,” said the nurse, whose heart was failing her at the last moment.
“She may be the devil for all I care,” returned Mrs. Dinneford.
Mrs. Bray did as she was ordered, but with an evident reluctance that irritated Mrs. Dinneford.
“Go now and bring up the woman,” she said, sharply.
The woman was brought. She was past the prime of life, and had an evil face. You read in it the record of bad passions indulged and the signs of a cruel nature. She was poorly clad, and her garments unclean.
“You will take this child?” said Mrs. Dinneford abruptly, as the woman came into her presence.
“I have agreed to do so,” she replied, looking toward Mrs. Bray.
“She is to have fifty dollars,” said the nurse.
“And that is to be the last of it!” Mrs. Dinneford's face was pale, and she spoke in a hard, husky voice.
Opening her purse, she