Lord Wilton listened with breathless attention. "Did your foster parents ever find out who your mother was?"
"She was a stranger in these parts, no one had ever seen her before."
"Was there anything on her person, or in her appearance by which she could be identified."
"Nothing, my lord. Father has often told me that she must have been very poor; that he never saw a body so wasted by starvation and misery. Her clothing was very scanty and ragged, and composed of the coarsest materials, begged, he supposed, from some poor creature, not quite so destitute as herself. She was very young, and he thought, at one time, must have been very pretty. He cut off a lock of her hair--I have it here, my lord," and Dorothy took from her neck a black ribbon, to which was suspended a large old-fashioned silver locket, and put it into Lord Wilton's hand. It contained a thick tress of golden brown hair.
He took the sad memento, all that remained to the poor girl of her mother, with a trembling hand, and went to the window to examine it.
Over his pale face a more deadly pallor stole. He looked at it with a long earnest gaze, then returned it with a deep sigh to the wondering girl.
"All but a plain wedding ring which I have on my finger."
"It is just like any other ring of the sort, my lord. It can tell nothing."
He clasped it eagerly in his own, and with some difficulty, drew the ring from her finger.
This underwent the same strict scrutiny that he had bestowed upon the locket, but his countenance betrayed still deeper emotion.
"Keep that ring!" he said solemnly, replacing it upon her finger. "Keep it as you would your life. It may be the means of restoring you to him who put it on your mother's finger. And the locket--was that hers?"
"No, my lord; it was given to me by Mrs. Rushmere."
"And these people--these Rushmeres--are they kind to you, Dorothy?"
"Yes, very kind. The only friends I have in the world."
"And what brought you to see me this morning?"
"Oh, my lord, it was on their account I came. They have an only son--Gilbert Rushmere. Last summer--it was just in the middle of the hay tide, and we were very busy at the farm--Gilbert quarrelled with his father about me." Dorothy looked down and blushed.