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Virgie's Inheritance

By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon



Author of "Nora," "Trixy,"
"Earle Wayne's Nobility,"
"Helen's Victory,"
"A True Aristocrat," Etc.

Copyright, 1887, 1888, 1891
By Street & Smith




Virgie's Inheritance.




Chapter I.

Virgie and the Benighted Traveler.



"Virgie, I shall have to give up the race."

"Papa!"

"My strength is failing rapidly. It was all that I could do to creep home
to-night. My trembling limbs, my labored breathing, and this dreadful
cough, all warn me that I must set my house in order, and make provision
for your future."

It was an apparently old man who spoke thus, and yet the years of his life
numbered but a little over fifty.

His hair was silvery white; his face was colorless and haggard, his eyes
dim and sunken, and his form was much attenuated and bowed by the disease
which was fast consuming him.

He was sitting by a blazing fire, in an ordinary easy-chair over which a
heavy coverlid had been throw