The Living Link | Page 3

be, and set herself to the task of winning his affections.
She had always understood that her father had been living in the East since her mother's
death. The only communication which she had with him was indirect, and consisted of
business letters which his English agent wrote to Miss Plympton. These were never any
thing more than short, formal notes. Such neglect was keenly felt, and Edith, unwilling to
blame her father altogether, tried to make some one else responsible for it. As she knew
of no other human being who had any connection with her father except this agent, she

brought herself gradually to look upon him as the cause of her father's coldness, and so at
length came to regard him with a hatred that was unreasoning and intense. She
considered him her father's evil genius, and believed him to be somehow at the bottom of
the troubles of her life. Thus every year this man, John Wiggins, grew more hateful, and
she accustomed herself to think of him as an evil fiend, a Mephistopheles, by whose
crafty wiles her father's heart had been estranged from her. Such, then, was the nature of
Edith's bereavement; and as she mourned over it she did not mourn so much over the
reality as over her vanished hope. He was gone, and with him was gone the expectation
of meeting him and winning his affection. She would never see him--never be able to tell
how she loved him, and hear him say with a father's voice that he loved his child!
These thoughts and feelings overwhelmed Edith even as she held the letter in her hand
for a new perusal, and she read it over and over without attaching any meaning to the
words. At length her attention was arrested by one statement in that short letter which had
hitherto escaped her notice. This was the name of the place where her father's death had
occurred--Van Diemen's Land.
"I don't understand this," said she. "What is the meaning of this--Van Diemen's Land? I
did not know that poor papa had ever left India."
Miss Plympton made no reply to this for some time, but looked more troubled than ever.
"What does it mean," asked Edith again--"this Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land? What
does it mean?"
"Well, dear," said Miss Plympton, in strangely gentle and mournful voice, "you have
never known much about your poor father, and you have never known exactly where he
has been living. He did not live in India, dear; he never lived in India. He lived
in--in--Van Diemen's Land."
Miss Plympton's tone and look affected Edith very unpleasantly. The mystery about her
father seemed to grow darker, and to assume something of an ill-omened character. The
name also--Van Diemen's Land--served to heighten her dark apprehensions; and this
discovery that she had known even less than she supposed about her father made it seem
as though the knowledge that had thus been hidden could not but be painful.
"What do you mean?" she asked again; and her voice died down to a whisper through the
vague fears that had been awakened. "I thought that poor papa lived in India--that he held
some office under government."
"I know that you believed so," said Miss Plympton, regarding Edith with a look that was
full of pity and mournful sympathy. "That was what I gave out. None of the girls have
ever suspected the truth. No one knows whose daughter you really are. They do not
suspect that your father was Dalton of Dalton Hall. They think that he was an Indian
resident in the Company's service. Yes, I have kept the secret well, dear--the secret that I
promised your dear mother on her death-bed to keep from all the world, and from you,
darling, till the time should come for you to know. And often and often, dear, have I
thought of this moment, and tried to prepare for it; but now, since it has come, I am worse

than unprepared. But preparations are of no use, for oh, my darling, my own Edith, I must
speak, if I speak at all, from my heart."
These words were spoken by Miss Plympton in a broken, disconnected, and almost
incoherent manner. She stopped abruptly, and seemed overcome by strong agitation.
Edith, on her part, looked at her in equal agitation, wondering at her display of emotion,
and terrified at the dark significance of her words. For from those words she learned this
much already--that her father had been living in Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony; that
around him had been a dark secret which had been kept from her most carefully; that her
parentage had been concealed most scrupulously from the knowledge of her school-mates;
and that this secret which had