The house became a hive of industry for the next few hours, though there wasn’t much to be done toward closing up, as the chauffeur’s wife would look after all that. Marjorie went at her packing. It didn’t take long. She took some of her prettiest casual dresses—the Wetherills had never approved of wearing mourning—and two or three plain little house dresses in case she found her relatives in poor circumstances. She must remember not to remind them that she had been brought up to plenty.

She took her checkbook and plenty of money, carefully stowed as she had been taught to do when traveling. She left no address with anybody. She did not want anyone coming after her to try to hinder her in whatever she should decide to do.

At the last she almost turned back, her heart failing her at what might be before her, for she was gifted with a strong imagination and had in the night envisioned a number of situations that might arise that would make her greatly regret this step she was taking. But the servants were gone now, and it was too late to turn back. The taxi was at the door to take her to the station.

She waited long enough to telephone her lawyer that she would be out of the city for a few days, perhaps till after Christmas, and would let him know her address later. Then she locked the door and went down the walk to the taxi, winking back the tears, feeling as if she were bidding good-bye to her former lovely life and stepping off into the great unknown. What a fool she was, she told herself—she didn’t have to stay if she didn’t want to. She could come right back the day she got there if she chose.

And so at last she was on her way, quite worn out with the tumult of her decision and her preparations.

The next morning she arrived in the strange city and went to a hotel. After attempting a sketchy breakfast, she took a taxi and drove to the address that had been given in the letter.

She had meant to do a great deal of thinking before she went to sleep in her berth, but the day of excitement had wearied her more than she knew and she had dropped to sleep at once and had not wakened until the porter called her in the morning. So now, as she rode along in her taxi, she suddenly felt unprepared for the ordeal that was before her. She had intended to plan just how she would open the interview, always supposing she found anybody to have an interview with, but now it seemed too absurd to plan anything for so vague a scene as she was about to stage. She found herself shrinking inexpressibly from the whole thing. If she had it to decide all over again this morning, she would certainly have turned it down as an utterly preposterous proposition. Certain words and phrases of Evan’s came to her mind, a tiny reflection of his sneer when he had told her it might be embarrassing for her to hunt up her relatives.

Then her own honest, loyal nature came to the front and declared to her that whoever or whatever they were, they were hers, something God had put her into the world with as her own, and nobody, not even themselves, had a right to put them asunder. They were her birthright, and something she must not disown.

Now and then it came to her that her adoptive mother should have faced this problem with her long ago, when it wouldn’t have hurt her so much, but instantly her love defended the only mother she had ever known, and her heart owned that it would have been very hard for Mrs. Wetherill. On the whole it was just as well that she should decide this thing for herself and act as she chose. And it was generous, of course, of Mrs. Wetherill to give her a free hand to do what she chose for her birth family.

So her thoughts battled back and forth as she rode along through the strange city, looking out but not seeing the new sights, not taking in a thing but the breathless fact that she was on her way unannounced to meet the people to whom she had been born, and she was frightened.

It seemed a very long drive, out through a scrubby part of the city and then into a sordid street of little cheap houses all alike, brick houses with wooden porches in an endless row, block after block, with untidy vacant lots across the street, ending in unpleasant ash heaps. It was before the last house in the row that the taxi stopped, on the far outskirts of the city, with a desolate stretch of city dump beyond. Marjorie’s heart almost stopped beating, and she nearly told the driver to turn about and take her back to the hotel. Could it be that her people lived in a house like this? A little two-story, seven-by-nine affair, with not even a pavement in front, just a hard clay path worn by the feet of many children playing?

The driver handed her her check, opened the door, and she got out her purse.

“I think perhaps you had better wait for me a minute or two until I make sure this is the right place,” she said hesitantly as she eyed the house with displeasure.

“Yes ma’am, this is the number you give me,” said the man, “1465 Aster Street.”

“Yes, but they might have moved, you know,” said Marjorie hopefully.

So, on feet that were strangely unsteady, she got out and went slowly up the two wooden steps to the door that sadly needed paint. There was no bell, so she knocked timidly, and then again louder when she heard no sound of life within. She was just about to turn away, almost hoping they were gone and she would have no clue to search further, when she heard hurried steps on a bare floor and the door was opened sharply, almost impatiently. Then she found herself face to face with a replica of herself!

“Does Mrs. John Gay live here?”

She said the words because she had prepared them on her lips to say, but she was so startled at the apparition of herself in the flesh standing before her that she did not realize she had asked the question.