Remo is a little village hidden in the hills of Quebec, but hardly one you might call idyllic. Several years ago, a party posing as a family book a room at the inn. The man soon leaves, but the woman and the young child that plainly isn’t hers stay behind. They’re regularly sent large sums of money — large, at least, in the eyes of De Lesser, the innkeeper — but then both the woman and child become deathly ill.
De Lesser took Sue from the Indian Reservation outside of town. She became his housekeeper, barkeeper, cook, maid, and general slave. She also became pregnant with his child, but he sent it back to the Reservation before she’d even seen it. The woman was being cared for by Sue and at least partly took Sue into her confidence. She was not the child’s mother, she was a hired nurse; nor had the man been the child’s father. She gives her addresses to write to and code names to use when either she or the baby dies.
De Lesser and Sue hold a brief conference before the doctor is called for. If the woman dies, then she dies, but if the baby dies, then the mysterious funds that arrive every month will stop. A substitution is made. The dying infant is left at the Reservation and Sue’s baby takes its place. The woman does not recover. Word is sent that she’s dead but that the child still lives. Funding for Lorraine continues for years upon years and she’s brought up with the vague belief that one day some rich parents will reclaim her.
Chester, the other child, didn’t die either, but comes very near to it. Dr. Manford Hill, who took the village practice, wants very much to have a family, but the conventional means of going about that don’t seem likely in Remo. He convinces Sue to allow him to adopt Chet. The boy flourishes under Man’s care, proving in his mind that blood means nothing, character is defined by environment. It isn’t very long that Man finds Sue accosting Chet for money. It seems the payments have stopped, and without them, De Lesser is going to sell Lorraine to “the half-breed Vic” recently out of prison and back on the Reservation.
Lorraine comes to live with the Hills. Meanwhile, a couple are searching the countryside. Philip Mordaunt and his wife Alice have learned the terrible secret Philip’s younger brother Martin confessed to only after his death. The Mordaunts ran a successful law firm and Martin sought to consolidate his inheritance by removing Philip and Alice’s offspring from the picture. He was the man who had left the baby and nurse at Remo, and paid for their silence for more than twenty years. The Mordaunts find their lost child, but to Lorraine’s surprise, it isn’t her. She never knew that Sue actually was her mother.
Chet agreed, after graduating college, to spend a year with the Mordaunts in the city. He will know both sides then. Philip is confident that the Mordaunt heritage will win out and that the appeals of wealth and society will turn his head. Alice is less so. The end of the year finds Chet back in Remo to go into practice with Man, and madly in love with Lorraine.
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