Geoffrey's Victory by Mrs Georgie Sheldon

Geoffrey's Victory; or, The Double Deception By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon, published by Street & Smith (1888). This domestic mystery novel opens in Boston during a severe winter freeze. Dr. Thomas Turner is summoned urgently to a hotel where he attends a beautiful, mysterious dark-haired woman, Mrs. E. E. Marston, who gives birth to a golden-haired infant daughter. The mother displays no maternal affection for the child. Mrs. Marston and her blonde female companion (registered as "maid" but clearly genteel) had arrived three weeks earlier speaking French and German fluently, richly dressed and wearing valuable jewels, deliberately secluding themselves. After recovering swiftly, Mrs. Marston astonishes Dr. Turner by requesting he recommend a public institution where she can abandon the child before departing to the warmer South. The doctor is horrified by her callous proposition, setting up the central mystery of the narrative.