"See her! No!" vehemently exclaimed the duke. Then recollecting himself, he inquired:

"Are you sure the man has gone to Paris?"

"Si, signor; I drove him myself, in my little cart, to San Stephano, where he took the train."

"You say that he left on the same day in which he brought the lady here?" inquired the duke, with more interest.

"Si, signor. They arrived in the afternoon, and he went away again in the evening."

"Hum. Why did he go so soon?"

"Affairs, signor. It is not to be thought he would have left the signora so sick if it had not been for affairs."

"The lady is sick, then?"

"Very sick, signor."

"What is the matter with her?"

"We do not know, signor. She will not have a doctor, but sits and pines."

"Ah! no doubt," said the duke to himself.

"Will the signor condescend to honor our poor shed by coming under its roof, where he may for himself see the signora?" said the vine-dresser, with much courtesy.

"Thanks, no. Back to the hotel!" he added, to the driver, who immediately turned his horse's head to the village.

With a parting nod to the courteous vine-dresser, the duke sank back on his seat, closed his eyes, and gave his mind up to thought.

Volaski had gone back to Paris. Why had he left Valerie and gone there? To resign his position in the embassy? To settle up business previous to taking up his permanent abode in Italy? Or had he returned so quickly to Paris only to conceal his crime and deceive the world into the opinion that he had not been out of Paris.

The duke did not know what his motive for so sudden a return could be; but judged the last-mentioned theory of causes to be the most probable.

"I do not know what else the caitiff has gone back for; but I know one thing—he has gone there to give me satisfaction," said the duke, grimly, to himself.

The horse, with the prospect of stall and fodder before him, made much better time in going home than in coming away, and so, in less than half an hour, the rumbling vehicle drew up before the little hotel.

The landlord himself came out to meet the returning traveler.

"I hope the illustrious signor found the excellent signor and the beautiful signora in good health," said the polite host, as he opened the carriage-door for his guest.

"The beautiful signora is sick and the excellent signor is gone," said the duke, grimly, as he got out.

"Misericordia!" cried the host, with a look of unutterable woe.

"That will do. Now let me have some supper as soon as you can get it, and when it is ready to be served, come yourself and tell me why I was not informed of the young man's departure before taking that useless drive to the vine-dresser's," said the duke, gravely.

"Pardon, illustrissimo, if I tell you now. We did not know the young signor had gone. He did not come this way. He must have taken another route and got his train at San Stephano," humbly replied the host.

"Ah! yes! the vine-dresser did tell me he had driven the man over to San Stephano. Well, then, hurry up my supper," said the duke, passing on to his room.

The landlord looked after him, muttering to himself:

"Ah! so not finding the excellent young signor, he has turned his back on the beautiful young signora. I know it! The other ancient and illustrious signor, who raised the devil in Beppo's cottage last year, and carried off the bride, was her father; but this illustrissimo is his father, wherefore he cares not to bring away the lovely signora."

The host then gave the necessary orders for the duke's supper to be prepared, and when it was ready he took it up to his guest.

The duke had no more questions to ask, and only two orders to give—breakfast at seven o'clock on the next morning, and a conveyance to take him to the railway station at half-past seven.

The next day the duke set out on his return to Paris, and on the fourth evening thereafter found himself re-established at his comfortable quarters at Meurice's.

He changed his dress, dined, and ordered the files of English and French newspapers for the past week to be brought to him.

He was interested only in political affairs when asking for the papers, and so he was quite as much astonished as grieved when his eyes fell upon this paragraph in the Times:

"A painful rumor reaches us from Paris. It is to the effect that a certain young and lovely duchess, who made her debut in English society as a bride only twelve months since, has left her home under the protection of a certain Polish count, attached to the Russian Embassy."

Stricken to the soul with shame, the unhappy duke sank back in his chair and remained as one paralyzed for several minutes; then slowly recovering himself he took up other papers, one by one, to see if they too recorded his dishonor.

Yes! each paper had its paragraph devoted to the one grand sensation of the day—the flight of the beautiful Duchess of Hereward with the young Russian count; and very few dealt with the deplorable case as delicately as the Times had done.

"So my dishonor is the talk of all Paris and London!" groaned the duke, dropping his head upon his chest. "If all the civilization of the nineteenth century had power to stay my arm in its vengeance, it has lost it now! And nothing is left for me to do but to kill the man and divorce the woman."

There was a certain Colonel Morris, of the Tenth Hussars, staying at Paris on leave.

The duke sat down at his writing-table and dashed off a hasty note to this compatriot, asking him to come to him immediately.

Then he rang the bell and gave the note to his own groom, saying:

"Take this to Colonel Morris, at the Trois Freres, and wait an answer."

The man took the message, bowed and hurried away.

The duke sank back in his chair with a deep sigh, and covered his face with his hands, and so awaited the return of his messenger.

Half an hour crept slowly by, and then the groom came back, opened the door, and announced:

"Colonel Morris."

The gallant colonel entered the room, looking as little like the dead shot and notorious duellist he was reported to be, as any fine gentleman could.

He was a tall, slight, fair and refined looking young man, exquisite in dress, soft in speech, and suave in manners.

"You have guessed the reason why I have sent for you, Morris?" said the duke, advancing to meet him, and plunging into the middle of his subject.

"Yes," murmured the colonel, sinking into the seat his host silently offered him.

"You can go, Tompkins. I will ring when I want you," said the duke, throwing himself into his own chair.

When the man had bowed himself out, and the duke and his visitor were left alone, the former said:

"You know why I have sent for you here. Now what do you advise?"

"You must blow out the man's brains and break the woman's heart," softly and sweetly replied the dandy duellist.

"The question arises whether the man has any brains to blow out, or the woman any heart to break," grimly commented the duke. "However," he added, "you are right, Morris, I must kill the man—divorce the woman. You are with me?"

"To the death," answered the elegant, in the same easy tone in which he ever uttered even the most ferocious words.

"You will take my challenge?"

"With much pleasure."

"I wonder where the fellow is to be found. At the Russian Embassy, I suppose," observed the duke, as he turned to his writing-table.

"No, not there. The Count de Volaski has withdrawn or been dismissed from the Embassy. It is not certainly known which. He is, meanwhile, at the Trois Freres. He has the honor of being my fellow-lodger," suavely observed the colonel.

"There," said the duke, as he folded and directed his note, "no time should be lost in an affair of this sort. It is not yet ten o'clock. You may even deliver this challenge to-night, if you will be so kind."

"Certainly," murmured the graceful colonel rising.

"I leave everything absolutely in your hands. Make every arrangement you may think proper; I will agree to it all; and many thanks," said the duke, striving to maintain a calm exterior, while his spirit was troubled within him.

"Expect me back to-night. I may be late, but I shall certainly report myself here," were the parting words of Colonel Morris as he left the room.

The duke walked slowly up and down the floor for nearly half an hour, and then he sat down to his desk and employed some hours in writing letters to his family, friends and men of business in England.

When he had completed his task he sealed and directed all these letters and locked them in his desk.

At a quarter past twelve the colonel returned to the hotel, and immediately presented himself at the duke's apartments.

He entered with a soft smile, and gently sank into a seat.

"Well?" inquired the duke.

"Well," cheerfully responded the second; "everything is pleasantly arranged. I had the good fortune of finding the count 'with himself,' as they say here. I explained my errand and delivered your missive. He read it and expressed his gratification at its reception, declaring that you had anticipated him by but a few hours, as he should certainly have called you out immediately upon hearing of your arrival in Paris."

"The diabolical villain!" hotly exclaimed the duke.

"He claimed the first right to the lady in question, and affirmed that it was your grace who had appropriated his wife—"

"O-h-h-h! when shall I have the opportunity of shooting him!" cried the duke.

"By and by," soothingly responded the colonel. "He referred me to his friend, Baron Blowmonozoff, then staying at the same house."

"Blowmonozoff! Yes, I know him. A very good fellow."

"A gentleman, I think. Of course I went directly from the presence of the count to that of the baron, who received me with much politeness, and was so kind as to express the pleasure he should feel in negotiating with me the terms of so interesting a meeting."

"And the terms, Colonel! What are they?"

"I am coming to them. The meeting is to take place at sunrise in the wood of Vincennes. We are to leave here an hour before dawn, in order to be on the spot in time. The weapons are to be pistols; the distance ten paces. Other minor details will be arranged on the spot. We shall each take a surgeon. I have engaged Doctor Legare. We will call and pick him up on our way to the ground. And now all we have got to do is to ring for the English waiter here, and get him to send us some coffee before we go out. I will see to that also, as I have taken a room in the house, and intend to stay here to-night, so as to be up in time in the morning."

"Thanks very much. You are really very good to take so much trouble," said the duke, with some emotion.

"No trouble, I assure you, duke; quite a pleasure," serenely answered the colonel.

"My friend, I have left half a dozen letters locked up in my writing-desk. I shall hand the key of that desk to you as we go out. If I should fall, I hope you will take charge of the desk and see to the delivery of the letters at their proper addresses," said the duke, more gravely than he had spoken before.

"Certainly, with much pleasure. Have you also made your will?" cheerfully inquired the colonel.

"No," shortly replied the duke.

"Then permit me to say that I think you should do so, by all means."

"There is no need. My estates are all entailed. My personal property is not worth winning. The—duchess is provided by her own dower, which came out of her own property, I am thankful to say. No, there is no need of a will."

"Then allow me to suggest that we ought to go to bed. It is now two o'clock. We must be up at five. We have just three hours to sleep, and—if you have no other commissions for me—I will retire," said the colonel, smoothly.

"Many thanks. I believe there is nothing more to be said or done to-night," responded the duke, in a desponding tone—for it cannot be an exhilarating anticipation to have to get up in the morning and stand up to murder, or be murdered, even where the duellist is the bravest of men, backed by the serenest of seconds.

"Then, since there is no further use for me this evening, I will say good-night and pleasant dreams," said the colonel, suavely, as he slid from the room.

Good-night and pleasant dreams to a duellist on the eve of a duel! Was it a sarcasm on the colonel's part? By no means; it was only the manifestation of his habitual smooth politeness.

The duke, left to himself, walked up and down the floor for a few minutes, and then rang for his valet to attend him, and retired to bed, leaving orders to be called at five o'clock in the morning.

Though left in quietness, he could not compose himself to sleep, but tossed and tumbled from side to side, spending the most wakeful and the most miserable night he had ever known in the whole course of his life. The time seemed stretched out upon a rack of torture, until the four hours extended to forty; for from the moment he had lain down he had not slept an instant, until he was startled by a rap at his bedroom door, and the voice of his valet calling:

"If you please, your grace, the clock has struck five; the coffee is ready, and the cab is at the door."

"Then come in and dress me quickly," answered the duke, rising, as the prompt servant entered and handed a dressing-gown.

The toilet of the duke was quickly made.

When he passed into the next room, he found the breakfast table laid and the colonel waiting for him.

"Good-morning, Duke. I hope you slept well. The day promises to be delightful. We have no time to lose, however, if we are to be on the ground at sunrise. Shall we have our coffee?" serenely inquired the second.

"Certainly—Tompkins, touch the bell," replied the duke.

The obedient valet rang, and a waiter entered with the breakfast-tray, which he set upon the table and proceeded to arrange.

"Take this case of pistols down very carefully, and place it in the cab, and put in a railway rug also," quietly directed the colonel, after the waiter had completed the arrangement of the breakfast table.

"What possible use can we make of a railway rug on such a mild morning as this?" gloomily inquired the duke.

The colonel looked calmly at the questioner, and quietly replied:

"To cover the body of the fallen man, whoever he may happen to be. I am so used to these affairs that I know what will be wanted beforehand. Shall we sit down to breakfast?"

Now the duke was a courageous man, but he shuddered at the coolness of his second, as he assented.

They sat down to the table and drank their coffee in silence.

Then with the assistance of the obsequious Mr. Tompkins, they drew on light overcoats suitable to the autumnal morning, and went down stairs, caps and gloves in hand, and entered the carriage that was to take them to the appointed place.

On their way they stopped at the Rue du Bains and took the surgeon who had been engaged to attend them.

Dr. Legare was a young graduate who had just commenced practice, and was eager for the fray.

He came into the carriage, bringing a rather ostentatious looking case of instruments and roll of bandages.

On being introduced by the second, he bowed to the duke and took his seat.

The carriage started again.

It was yet dark.

After an hour's ride they reached a quiet, solitary glade in the wood of Vincennes.

The carriage drove up under some trees on one side.

It was yet earliest morning, and the glade lay in the darksome, dewy freshness of the dawn. There was no living creature to be seen.

"We are the first on the ground, as I always like to be," remarked Colonel Morris, as he alighted from the carriage, bearing the pistol-case in his hands.

He was followed by the duke, who slowly came out, stood by his side and looked around.

The young surgeon remained in the carriage in charge of his very suggestive and alarming instruments and appliances.

"The sun is just rising," said the duke, as the first rays sparkled up above the rosy line of the eastern horizon.

"And look, with dramatic precision, there are our men," cheerfully remarked the colonel, as a second carriage rolled into the glade and drew up under the trees at a short distance from the first.

The carriage door was thrown open and the Russian Baron Blomonozoff came out—a thin, ferocious-looking little man, with a red face, encircled by a red beard and red hair, of all of which it would be difficult to say which was reddest.

He was followed by the beautiful Adonis, the Count de Volaski, looking very fair and dainty, very languid and melancholy.

The four gentlemen simultaneously raised their hats in courteous greeting; but no words passed between them then.

The seconds advanced toward each other, and went apart to settle the final details of the meeting. They divided their duties equally.

The colonel gave the pistol-case to the baron, who opened it and examined the weapons. The colonel stepped off the ten paces of ground, and the baron marked the positions to be taken by the antagonists.

Then each went after his man and placed him in position. Then the Colonel took the case of pistols and placed it in the hands of the baron, who carried it to his principal, that the latter might take his choice of the pair of revolvers, in accordance with the terms of the meeting.

The count took the first that came to hand. The baron carried back the case to the colonel, who placed the remaining weapon in the hands of the duke.

The antagonists stood opposite each other in a line of ten paces running north and south, so that the sun was equally divided between them. The seconds stood opposite each other, in a line of six paces running east and west, across the line of their principals; so that the positions of the four men, as they stood, formed the four points of a diamond.

They stood prepared for the mortal issue.

A fatal catastrophe is always sudden and soon over.

The final question was asked by the duke's second:

"Gentlemen, are you ready?"

"We are," responded both principals.

"One—two—three—FIRE!" intoned the Russian baron.

Two flashes, a simultaneous report, and the Count de Volaski leaped into the air and fell down, with a heavy thud, upon his face!

The seconds hastened to raise the fallen man. The duke stood panic-stricken for an instant, and then followed them.

The unfortunate count lay in a tumbled, huddled, shapeless heap, with his head bent under him. Not a drop of blood was to be seen on his person or clothing. The Russian baron raised him up. There was a gasp, a momentary flutter of the lips and eyelids, and all was still.

The colonel hurried off to the carriage to call the surgeon.

The duke stood gazing on his murdered foe, aghast at his own deed and feeling the brand of Cain upon his brow, notwithstanding that he had acted in accordance with the "code of honor."

The surgeon came in haste with his box of instruments in his hands, and the roll of linen under his arm.

He put these articles on the ground, and knelt down to examine his subject; for the body of the count was only a subject now, and not a patient.

After a careful investigation, the surgeon arose and pronounced his verdict.

"Shot through the heart: quite dead."

The Duke of Hereward groaned aloud. None of his wrongs could have been such a calamity as this! None of his sufferings could have equalled in intensity of agony this appalling sense of blood-guiltiness!

"Can nothing be done?" he inquired, not with the slightest hope that anything could, but rather in the idiocy of utter despair.

"Nothing. No medical skill can raise the dead," solemnly answered the surgeon.

"One of you fellows can bring the railway rug out of our carriage. I knew it would be needed," said the serenely practical colonel.

The count's servant started to obey.

The duke groaned and turned away from the body of his fallen foe, upon which he could not endure longer to gaze.

The Russian baron came up to him, and with the knightly courtesy of his caste and country, said:

"Monseigneur may rest tranquil. Everything has been conducted in accordance with the most rigid rules of honor. The result has been unfortunate for my distinguished principal, but Monseigneur has nothing with which to reproach himself."

"Thanks, Baron. You are kind to say so. Yet I would that I had never lived to see this day; or the worthless woman who has caused this catastrophe!" exclaimed the duke, as he walked hurriedly away and hid himself and his remorse in the inclosure of his own carriage.

There he was soon joined by his serene second, who entered the carriage and gave the order to the coachman;

"Drive to the Depot St. Lazare."

"Why to the depot?" gloomily inquired the duke, as the coachman closed the door and remounted to his box.

"Because we must get out of Paris—yes, and out of France also," calmly replied the colonel, sinking back in his seat as the cab drove off.

"Who is looking after—after—"

"The body? I left Legare to help Blomonozoff and his servant to remove it. We must get away. An arrest would not be pleasant."

"No, no, certainly not; yet not on that account, but for the peace of my own spirit, I would to Heaven this had not happened!" exclaimed the duke.

"Why? Everything went off most agreeably. Indeed, this was one of the most satisfactory meetings at which I ever assisted," said the colonel, comfortably.

"I wish to Heaven it had never taken place! I would give my right hand to undo its own deed to-day—if that were possible!" groaned the homicide.

"Why should you disturb yourself?—but perhaps this is your first affair of the kind?" calmly inquired the colonel.

"My first and last! I do not know how any one can engage in a second one after feeling what it is to kill a man."

"You feel so because it is your first affair. You would not mind your second, and you would rather enjoy your third," suavely observed the colonel, who then drew a railway card from his pocket, examined it, looked at his watch, and said:

"We shall be in time to catch the morning's express to Calais, and we may actually eat our dinners in London. When we arrive you can get some of your people to send a telegram to Tompkins, to order him to pay your hotel bill and bring your effects to London, or wherever else you may think of stopping."

"Thanks for your counsel. I leave myself entirely in your hands," said the duke, with a half-suppressed sigh.

They caught the express to Calais, connected with the Dover boat, and crossed the channel the same day. They ran up to London by the afternoon train, and arrived in good time for a dinner at "Morley's."

Two telegrams were dispatched to Paris—one to the respectable Mr. Tompkins, with orders to pay bills and return with his master's effects; the other to the estimable Mr. Joyce, the groom of the colonel, with orders to perform the same services in behalf of his own employer.

Then the principal and his second separated—the duke to go to his town-house in Piccadilly and the colonel to join his regiment, then stationed at Brighton.

And as the extradition treaty had not at that day been thought of, both were perfectly safe.



CHAPTER XL.

AFTER THE STORM.

The Duke of Hereward only remained in town until the arrival of his servants with his effects from Paris.

He avoided looking at the newspapers, which, he knew, must contain exaggerated statements of the duel and its causes, if, indeed, any statement of such horrors could be exaggerated.

On the third day after his arrival in London, he went down to Greencombe, a small family estate in a secluded part of Sussex, near the sea.

Here he hid himself and his humiliations from the world.

The primitive population around Greencombe had never seen the duke, or any of his family, who preferred to reside at Hereward Hold, in Devonshire, or their town-house in Piccadilly, leaving their small Sussex place in charge of a land-steward and a few old servants.

They had never even heard of the marriage of the duke in Paris, much less the flight of the duchess, or the duel with Volaski.

This neglect of his poor people at Greencombe had hitherto been a matter of compunction to the conscientious soul of the duke, but he now was satisfied with the course of conduct which had left them in total ignorance of himself and his unhappy domestic history.

The duke and his fine servants were received with mingled deference, gladness and embarrassment by the aged and rustic couple who acted as land-steward and housekeeper at Greencombe, and who now bestirred themselves to make their unexpected master and his attendants comfortable.

The duke gave orders that he should be denied to all visitors, though there was little likelihood of any calling upon him, except perhaps the vicar of Greencombe church.

Here the duke vegetated until the meeting of Parliament, when he went up to London to institute proceedings for a divorce.

At that time there was no divorce court, and little necessity for one. Divorces were to be obtained by act of Parliament only.

The duke commenced proceedings immediately on his arrival in London. His case was a clear and simple one; there was no opposition; consequently he was soon, matrimonially considered a free man.

The Duke of Hereward was now nearly fifty years of age. Life was uncertain, and the laws of succession very certain.

If the present bearer of the coronet of Hereward should die childless, the title would not descend to the son of his only and beloved sister, but would go to a distant relative whom the duke hated.

A speedy marriage seemed necessary.

The duke looked around the upper circle of London society, and fixed upon the Lady Augusta Victoria McDugald, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Banff, and a woman as little like his unhappy first wife as it was Possible for her to be.

"The daughter of an hundred earls" was tall and stately, cold and proud, embodying the child's or the peasant's very ideal of "a duchess."

"Dukes," like monarchs, "seldom woo in vain."

After a short courtship the duke proposed for the lady, and after a shorter engagement, married her.

The newly-wedded pair went on a very unusually extended tour over Europe, into Asia and Africa, and then across the ocean and over North and South America.

After twelve months spent in travel, they returned to England only that the anticipated heir of the dukedom might be born on the patrimonial estate of Hereward Hold.

There was the utmost fulfillment of hope. The expected child proved to be a fine boy, who was christened for his father, Archibald-Alexander-John, by courtesy styled Marquis of Arondelle.

Had the duke's mind been as free from remorse for his homicide as his heart was free from regret for his first love, he would have been as happy a man as he was a proud father; but ah! the sense of blood-guiltiness, although incurred in the duel, under the so-called "code of honor," weighed heavily upon his conscience, and over-shadowed all his joys.

His duchess was a prolific mother, and brought him other sons and daughters as the years went by; but, as if some spell of fatality hung over the family, these children all passed away in childhood, leaving only the young Marquis of Arondelle as the sole hope of the great ducal house of Hereward.

So the time passed in varied joys and sorrows, without bringing any tidings, good or bad, of the poor, lost girl who had once shared the duke's title and possessed his heart.

He believed her to be as dead to the world as she was to him. And so he gradually forgot even that she had ever lived! She had long been "out of mind" as "out of sight."

Fifteen years of married life had passed over the heads of the Duke and Duchess of Hereward.

The duchess at thirty-five was still a very beautiful woman, a reigning belle, a leader of fashion, a queen of society.

The duke at sixty-five was still a very handsome, stately and commanding old gentleman, with hair and beard as white as snow. He was a great political power in the House of Lords. Their son, the young Marquis of Arondelle, was a fine boy of fourteen.

It was very early summer in London. Parliament was in session, and the season was at its height.

The Duke and Duchess of Hereward were established in their magnificent town-house in Piccadilly.

The Marquis of Arondelle was pursuing his studies at Eton.

A memorable day was at hand for the duke.

It was the morning of the first of June—a rarely brilliant and beautiful day for London.

The duchess had gone down to a garden party at Buckingham Palace.

The duke sat alone in his sumptuous library, whose windows overlooked the luxuriant garden, then in its fullest bloom and fragrance.

The windows were open, admitting the fine, fresh air of summer, perfumed with the aroma of numberless flowers, and musical with the songs of many birds.

The duke sat in a comfortable reading-chair, with an open book on its rotary ledge. He was not reading. The charm of external nature, appealing equally to sense and sentiment, won him from his mental task, and soothed him into a delicious reverie, during which he sat simply resting, breathing, gazing, luxuriating in the lovely life around him.

In the midst of this clear sky a thunderbolt fell.

A discreet footman rapped softly, and being told to enter, glided into the room, bearing a card upon a tiny silver tray, which he brought to his master.

The duke took it, languidly glanced at it, knit his brows, and took up his reading-glass and examined it closely. No! his eyes had not deceived him. The card bore the name: ARCHBALD A. J. SCOTT.

"Who brought this?" inquired the duke.

"A young gentleman, sir," respectfully answered the footman.

"Where is he?"

"I showed him into the blue reception room, your grace."

The duke paused a moment, gazing at the card, and then abruptly demanded:

"What is the young man like?"

"Most genteel, your grace; most like our young lord, and about his age, and dressed in the deepest mourning, your grace; and most particular anxious to see your grace."

"I do not know the boy at all; do not know where he came from, nor what he wants; but he bears the family name, and looks like Arondelle," mused the duke, gazing at the card and knitting his brow.

"I will see the young man. Show him up here," at length he said, abruptly.

The footman bowed and withdrew.

A few moments passed and the footman re-entered and announced:

"Mr. Scott," and withdrew.

The duke wheeled his chair around and looked at the visitor, who stood just within the door, bowing profoundly.

The newcomer was a youth of about fifteen years of age, tall, slight and elegant in form; fair, blue-eyed and light-haired in complexion; refined, graceful and self possessed in manner; and faultlessly dressed in deep mourning; but! how amazingly like the duke's own son, the young Marquis of Arondelle.

The duke's short survey of his visitor seemed so satisfactory that he arose and advanced to meet him, saying kindly:

"You wished particularly to see me, I understand, young gentleman. In what manner can I serve you?"

The youth bowed again with the deepest deference, and said:

"Thanks, your grace. I bring you a letter of introduction."

"Sit down, young sir, sit down, and give me your letter," said the duke, pointing to a chair, and resuming his own seat. "Good Heaven, how like this boy's voice was to the voice of the young Marquis of Arondelle! Who could he be?" mused the duke, as he sat and waited the issue.

The youth seated himself as directed, and seemed to hesitate, as if respectfully referring to his host's convenience.

"Your letter of introduction, now, if you please, young sir," said the duke, at length.

"Thanks; your grace. It's from my mother. She—" Here the boy's voice faltered and broke down; but he soon, recovered it and resumed: "She wrote it on her death-bed—on the very day she died. Here it is, your grace."

The duke took the letter and held it gravely in his fingers while he gazed upon the orphaned boy with sympathy and compassion in every lineament of his fine face, saying, slowly and seriously:

"Ah! that is very, very sad. You have lost your mother, my boy; and if I judge correctly from the circumstance of your coming to me, you have lost your father also. I hope, however, I am wrong."

"Your grace is right. I have lost my father also. I lost him first, so long ago that I have no memory of him. I have no relatives at all. That is the reason why my dear mother, on her death-bed, gave me that letter of introduction to your grace, who used to know her, so that I might not be without friends as well as without relatives," modestly replied the youth.

"Ah! I see! I see! And she wrote this letter on her death-bed, which gives it a grave importance. I must therefore pay the more respect to it. The wishes of the dying should be considered sacred," said the duke, as he adjusted his glass and looked at the letter, wondering who the writer could be and what claims she could possibly have on him; but feeling too kindly toward the orphan-boy to let such thought betray itself.

He scrutinized the handwriting of the letter. He could not recognize the faint, scratchy, uncertain characters as anything he had ever seen before. After all, the whole thing might be an imposture, and he himself an exceedingly great dupe, to suffer his feelings to be enlisted by a perfect stranger, merely because that stranger happened to be a counterpart of his own idolized boy Arondelle.

Still dallying with the note, he looked again at the youth, and as he looked, his confidence in him revived. No boy of such a noble countenance could possibly be an impostor. He might have satisfied himself at once, by opening the note and reading the signature; but from some occult reason that even he could not have given, he held it in his hands for a few moments longer, as if it contained some oracle he dreaded to discover. At length he broke the seal and looked at the signature. It was a faint maze of scratches, so difficult to decipher that he gave it up in despair, and turning to the boy, said:

"Your name is Scott, young sir?"

"Yes, your grace—a very common name," modestly replied the youth.

"It is ours also" added the duke with a smile.

"I beg your grace's pardon," said the boy, with some embarrassment.

"No offence, young sir. Your mother's name was also Scott, I presume?"

"Yes, your grace; my mother never re-married."

"Ah," said the duke, and he turned the letter for the first page, and commenced its perusal.

And then—

Reader! If the Duke of Hereward's hair had not already been white with age, it must have turned as white as snow with amazement and horror as he read the astounding disclosures of that dying woman's letter!



CHAPTER XLI.

FATHER AND SON.

The first part of the letter was written in a much clearer chirography than the latter, where it grew fainter and more irregular as it proceeded, until at last, in the signature, it was so nearly illegible as to baffle the ingenuity of the reader to decipher it; as if, in the course of her task, the strength of the dying writer had grown weaker and weaker, until at the end the pen must have fallen from her failing hand.

The Duke of Hereward, who could not make out the name at the bottom of the letter, at once recognized the handwriting at the top, and knew that his correspondent from the dead was his lost wife, Valerie de la Motte.

He grew cold with the chill of an anticipated horror; but with that supreme power of self-control which was as much a matter of constitution as of education with him, he suppressed all signs of emotion, and courteously apologized to his visitor, saying:

"Excuse me, young sir; my eyes are not so good as they were some twenty years ago, and I must turn to the light," and he deliberately wheeled his chair around so as to bring his face entirely out of range of his visitor's sharp vision, while he should read the fatal letter, which was as follows:

"SAN VITO, ITALY, MARCH 1st, 18—

"DUKE OF HEREWARD: This paper will be handed you by Archibald-Alexander-John Scott, my son and yours.

"This news will startle you, if you have not already been sufficiently startled by the living likeness of the boy to yourself, and by the electric chain of memory which will bring before you the weeks immediately preceding our separation, when you yourself had suspicions of my condition, and hopes of becoming a father. Those fond hopes were destined to be fulfilled by me, but doomed to be ruined by you.

"Yes, Duke of Hereward, your son stands before you, strong, healthy, beautiful, perfect as ever wife bore to her husband; yet denied, delegalized, and defrauded by you, his father!

"If you are inclined still to deny him, turn and look upon him, as he stands, and you can no longer do so. If you want further proof, find it in these circumstances: That this letter is written, and these statements are made by a dying woman, with the immediate prospect of eternity and its retribution before her.

"But on one point be at ease before you read farther; the boy does not know who his father is, and therefore does not know how grievously, how irretrievably you wronged him by divorcing his mother and delegalizing him before his birth. I would not put enmity between father and son by telling him anything about it. He thinks that his father is dead, and I have never undeceived him. He has heard of you only as one who was a friend of his mother, and who, for her sake, may become the friend of her son. It must be for you to decide whether to leave him in this ignorance or to tell him the truth.

"Perhaps you will ask why I have concealed your son's existence from you up to this time. I will tell you; but in order to do so clearly, I must refer to those last few weeks spent with you in Paris before our separation.

"Remember the ball at the British Embassy, to which you persuaded me to go, and where I met, unexpectedly the Count de Volaski, my secretly married husband, supposed to be dead; remember my illness that followed! and how earnestly I tried to avoid him, an effort that was totally useless, because he, considering that he possessed the only rightful claim to my society, constantly sought me, and you, ignorant of all his antecedents, constantly helped him to see me.

"My position was degrading, agonizing, intolerable. I found myself, though guiltless of any intentional wrong-doing, in the horrible dilemma of a wife with two living husbands.

"Yes, by the laws of love and nature, justice and the church, I was the wife of Waldemar de Volaski; by the laws of France and England, I was the wife of the Duke of Hereward.

"The discovery shocked, confused, and, perhaps, unsettled my reason. At first I knew not what to do. I prayed for death. I contemplated suicide. At length, I thought I saw a way out of my dreadful dilemma. It was to escape and to live apart from both forever.

"So also thought the Count de Volaski. I consulted with him. I dared not confess to you the secret that my parents had compelled me to conceal so long. Volaski would have told you, but I would not consent that he should do so, until I should be safe out of the house; for I could not have borne, after such confession, to have met you again; and again, under any circumstances, I preferred that I myself should be your informant. I determined to leave yon, and to live apart from both, as the only life of peace and honor possible for me, and to write you a letter confessing the whole truth, as an explanation of my course of conduct. I thought that you would understand and pity me, and leave me to my fate.

"I did not think that you would disbelieve my statement, publish my flight, and blast my reputation by a divorce.

"I was never false to you in thought, word or deed.

"Volaski was not my lover; he was my sternest mentor. He came to the house during your absence; not for the pleasure of seeing me, for he took no pleasure in my society; he came to arrange with me the programme of my departure; an angel of purity or a demon of malice might have been present at our interviews, and seen nothing to grieve the first or please the last.

"I was ill and nervous and fearful; I could not travel alone, and therefore Volaski went with me, and took care of me; but it was the care a pitiless gend'arme would have taken of a convicted criminal. It was a care that only hurried me to my destination, my chosen place of exile—San Vito—and which left me on the day of my arrival there. I have never seen him since. And now let me say and swear on the Christian faith and hope of a dying woman—that—from the moment I met Count Waldemar de Volaski at the British embassy, to the moment I parted with him at San Vito, he never once came so near me as even to kiss my hand—a courtesy that any gentleman might have shown without blame. You may not believe me now; that you did not believe me before was your great misfortune, and mine, and our son's.

"A week after Volaski had left me you followed us and traced us to San Vito. I heard of your visit and trembled; for, though really guiltless, I felt that to meet your eye would seem worse than death. Fortunately for us both, perhaps, you declined to see me and went away.

"The next news that I heard was of the duel in which you had killed Volaski. I should scarcely have believed in his death this time, had not a packet been forwarded to me, through his second. This packet contained a letter that he had written to me on the eve of the duel, and with a presentiment of death overshadowing him. In this letter he said that in death he claimed me again as his wife, and bequeathed to me, as to his widow, all that he had the power to leave, his personal property, and he took a last solemn farewell of me.

"In the packet, besides, was his will and other documents necessary to put me in possession of his bequest, and also a great number of valuable jewels.

"These, together with my own small dower, have made me independent for life.

"It will show how perfectly palsied was my heart when I tell you that I could not feel either horror of crime, grief for Volaski's death, or gratitude for his bequest.

"I could feel nothing.

"Days and weeks passed in this apathy of despair, from which I was at length painfully aroused by a most shocking discovery.

"Madelena, my hostess, who tenderly watched over my health had her suspicions aroused, and put some motherly questions to me, and when I had answered them she startled me with the announcement that in a very few months I should become a mother.

"This news, so joyful to most good women, only filled my soul with sorrow and dismay. It seemed to complicate my difficulties beyond all possibility of extrication.

"Lena, poor woman, who had never heard of my marriage with the Duke of Hereward, but had known me as the wife of the Count de Volaski, believed that all my distress was caused by the prospect of becoming the mother of a fatherless child, and bent all her energies to try to comfort me with the assurance that this motherhood would be the greatest blessing of my lonely life.

"Ah! how willing would I have confided the whole truth to this good woman if I had dared to do so! It will show how timid I had grown when I assure you that I, a faithful daughter of the church, had not even ventured to go to confession once since my arrival in Italy.

"Now, Duke of Hereward, attend to my words! Had you been less bitterly incredulous of my statements, less cruel in your judgment of me, less murderous in your vengeance upon one much more sinned against than sinning, I should have ventured to write to you of my condition and my prospect of giving you an heir to your dukedom, in time to prevent your rash and fatal act by which you unconsciously delegalized your own lawful son!

"But your murderous cruelty had left me in a state of stupor from which I could not rally.

"Night after night I resolved to write to you. Day after day I tried to carry my resolution into effect. Time after time I failed through fear of you!

"At length I persuaded myself that there was no immediate necessity for action on my part. I might defer writing to you until the arrival of my child. That child might prove to be a girl, who could not be your heir, and, therefore, could not be an object of momentous importance to you; or it might die. Either of which circumstance would relieve me from the painful duty of opening a correspondence with you; or I myself might perish in the coming trial, when the duty of communicating the facts to you would devolve upon some one whom I would appoint with my dying breath.

"These were the causes of my fatal delay in writing to you.

"At length the time arrived. On the fifth of April, just five months after our separation. I became the mother of a fine, healthy, beautiful boy. He brought with him the mother-love that is Heaven's first gift to the child. I loved my son as I never loved a human being before. I had prayed for death; but as I clasped my first-born to my bosom, I asked pardon for that sinful prayer, thanked the Lord that I had lived through my trial, and besought him still to spare my life for my boy's sake. From that day forth I was able to pray and to give thanks. I resolved that my first act of recovery should be to go to the church and make my confession to the good father there, gain my absolution, and then write and inform you of the birth of your heir, the infant Earl of Arondelle, for such I knew was even then the baby boy's title! With these fond hopes I rapidly recovered. "Perfect love casteth out fear." Mother-love had cast out from my soul all fear of you. I thought that you would feel so rejoiced at the news of the birth of your son, your heir, and so fine a boy, that even for his sake you would forgive his mother, supposing that you should still think you had anything to forgive.

"In the midst of my vain dreaming a thunderbolt fell upon me!

"My boy was six weeks old. I had not yet left the house to carry out any of my happy resolutions, when my good Madelena entered my room and brought two large parcels of English papers, such as were sent me monthly by my London correspondent. She told me that the first parcel had arrived during my confinement to my bed, and that she had laid it away and forgotten all about it until this day, when the arrival of the second parcel had reminded her of it, and now she had brought them both, and hoped I would excuse her negligence in not having remembered to bring the first parcel sooner. I readily and even hastily excused her, for I was anxious to get rid of my good hostess and read my files of papers.

"As any one else would have done under the like circumstances, I opened the last parcel first, and selected the latest paper to begin with. It was the London Times of April 7th. As I opened it, a short, marked paragraph caught my eyes.

"Judge of my consternation when I read the notice of your marriage with the Lady Augusta McDugald!

"The letters ran together on my vision, the room whirled around with me, all grew dark, and I lost consciousness. When I recovered my senses I found myself in bed, with Madelena and several of her kind neighbors in attendance upon me. Many days passed before I was able to look again at the file of English newspapers.

"You had married again! you had married just one week before the birth of my son! But under what circumstances had you married? Did you suppose me to be dead, and that my death had set you free? Or—oh, horror! had you dragged my name before a public tribunal, and by lying facts—for facts do often lie—had you branded me with infidelity, and repudiated me by divorce?

"Such were the questions that tormented me, until I was able to examine the file of English newspapers, and find out from them; for, as before, I would not have taken any one into my confidence by getting another to read the papers for me, even if I could have found any one in that rural Italian neighborhood capable of reading English.

"At length, one morning, I sent for the papers, and began to look them over, and I found—merciful Heaven! what I feared to find—the full report of our divorce trial! found myself held up to public scorn and execration, the reproach of my own sex—the contempt of yours! Found myself, in short, convicted and divorced from you, upon the foulest charge that can be brought upon a woman! Guiltless as I was! wronged as I had been! wishing only to live a pure and blameless life, as I did!

"Oh! the intolerable anguish of the days that followed! But for my baby boy, I think I should have died, or maddened!

"In my worst paroxysms, good Madelena would come and take up my baby and lay him on my bosom, and whisper, that no doubt, though his handsome young father had gone to Heaven, it was all for the best; and we too, if we were good, would one day meet him there, or words to that effect.

"Surely angels are with children, and their presence makes itself felt in the comfort children bring to wounded hearts.

"One day, in a state bordering on idiocy, I think, I examined and compared dates, in the sickening hope that my darling boy might have been born before the decree of divorce had been pronounced, and thus be the heir of his father's dukedom, notwithstanding all that followed.

"But, ah! that faint hope also was destined to die! The dates, compared, stood thus:

"The decree of divorce was pronounced February 13th, 18—.

"The marriage between yourself and Lady Augusta McDugald was solemnized April 1st, 18—.

"My boy was born April 15th, 18—.

"Yes, you divorced the guiltless mother two months, and married another woman two weeks, before the birth of your innocent boy.

"You cruelly and unjustly disowned, disinherited, and even delegalized, and degraded your son before he was born! So that your son was not born in wedlock, could not bear your name, or inherit your title! And this misfortune came upon him by no fault of his, or of his most unhappy mother's but by the jealousy, vengeance, and fatal rashness of his father! And now there was no help, either in law or equity, for the dishonored boy.

"This, Duke of Hereward, is the ruin you have wrought in his life, in mine, and in yours.

"Do you wonder that when I realized it all I fell into a state of despair deeper than any I had ever yet known?—a despair that was characterized by all who saw it as melancholy madness.

"My dear boy, who was at first such a comfort to me, was now only a beloved sorrow! When I held him to my bosom, I thought of nothing but his bitter, irreparable wrongs.

"I do not know how long I had continued to live in this despairing and heathenish condition, when one day, in harvest time, Madelena brought good Father Antonio to see me. This Father Antonio was the priest of the chapel of Santa Maria, who had performed the marriage ceremony between Waldemar de Volaski and myself.

"The father also naturally supposed that all my grief was for the death of my child's father. He began in a gentle, admonitory way to rebuke me for inordinate affection and sinful repining, and to remind me of the comfort and strength to be found in the spirit of religion and the ordinances of the Church.

"My heart opened to the good old priest as it had never opened to a living man or even woman before.

"Then and there I told him the whole secret history of my life, including every detail of my two unhappy marriages, and the fatal divorce preceding the birth of my son. I concealed nothing from him. I told him all, and felt infinitely relieved when I had done so.

"The gentle old man dropped tears of pity over me, and sat in silent sympathy some time before he ventured to give me any words.

"At length he arose and said:

"'Child, I must go home and pray for wisdom before I can venture to counsel you.'

"'Bless me, then, holy father.'

"He laid his venerable hands upon my bowed head, raised his eyes to Heaven, and invoked upon me the divine benediction, of which I stood so much in need.

"Then he silently passed from the room.

"That night I slept in peace.

"The next day the good old man came to me again.

"He told me that my first marriage with Waldemar de Volaski was my only true marriage, indissoluble by anything but death, however invalid in law it might be pronounced by those who were interested in breaking it.

"That my second marriage contracted with the Duke of Hereward during the life of my first husband, was sacrilegious in the eyes of religion and the church, however legal it might be considered by the laws of England or of France, and pardonable in me only on account of my ignorance at the time of the continued existence of my first husband.

"That the desperate step I had taken of leaving the Duke of Hereward, upon the discovery of the existence of Waldemar de Volaski, was the right and proper course for me to pursue; but that he regretted I had not possessed the moral courage to tell the duke the whole story, for he had that much right to my confidence.

"As for the divorce I so much lamented, it was to be regretted only for the sake of the son whom it had outlawed, for he was the son of a lawful marriage in the eyes of the world, if not a sacred one in the eyes of the church.

"For the boy thus cruelly wronged there seemed no opening on earth. He was disowned, disinherited, delegalized, deprived even of a name in this world. All earth was closed against him.

"But all Heaven was open to him. The church, Heaven's servant, would open her arms to receive the child the world had cast out. The church in baptism would give him a name and a surname; would give him an education and a mission. I must, like Hannah of old, devote my son, even from his childhood up, to the service of the altar, and the church would do the rest.

"How comforted I was! I had something still to live for! My outcast son would be saved. He could not inherit his father's titles and estates; he could not be a duke, but he would be a holy minister of the Lord; he might live to be a prince of the church, an archbishop or a cardinal.

"Foolish ambition of a still worldly mother you may think. Yes! but he was her only son, and she was worse than widowed.

"I agreed to all the good priest said. I promised to dedicate my son to the service of the altar.

"The next Sunday I went to the chapel of Santa Maria and had my child christened. I gave him in baptism the full name of his father. Beppo and Madelena stood as his sponsors. They told me St. John would be his patron saint.

"I rallied from my torpor. I built a roomy cottage in a mountain dell near the chapel of Santa Maria, furnished it comfortably, and moved into it, and engaged an Italian nurse and housekeeper, for I had resolved to pass my life among the simple, kindly people who were the only friends misfortune had left me.

"Another trial awaited me—a light one, however, in comparison to those I had suffered and outlived.

"This trial came when my son was but little over a year old, and I had been about six months in the "Hermitage," as I called my new home.

"One morning I received a file of English papers for the month of May just preceding. In the papers of the first week in May I saw announced the birth of your son, called the infant Marquis of Arondelle, and the heir. I read of the great rejoicings in all your various seats throughout the United Kingdom, and the congratulations of royalty itself, upon this auspicious event. I clasped my disinherited son to my bosom and wept the very bitterest tears I had ever shed in my life.

"Later on I read in the papers for the last of May a graphic account of the grand pageantry of the christening, which took place at St. Peter's, Euston Square, where an archbishop performed the sacred rites and a royal duke stood sponsor, and of the great feastings and rejoicings in hall and hut on every estate of yours throughout the kingdom. I thought of my disowned boy's humble baptism in the village church by the country priest, where two kind-hearted peasants stood sponsors for him, and I wept myself nearly blind that night.

"The next day I went to the little church and told the good father there all about it. He understood and sympathized with me, counselled and comforted me as usual.

"He admonished me that to escape from the wounds of the world, I must not only forsake the world, as I had done, but forget the world as I had not done; to forget the world I must cease to search and inquire into its sayings and doings; and he advised me to write and stop all my newspapers, which only brought me news to disturb my peace of mind.

"I followed the direction of my wise guide. I wrote immediately and stopped all my newspapers.

"After that I devoted myself to the nurture of my child, to the care of my little household, to the relief of my poorer neighbors, and to the performance of my religious duties; and time brought me resignation and cheerfullness.

"From that day to this, Duke of Hereward, I have never once seen your name printed or written, and never once heard it breathed. You may have passed away from earth, for aught I know to the contrary; though I hope and believe that you have not.

"My boy throve finely. The good priest of Santa Maria took charge of his education for the first twelve years of the pupil's life, made of him, even at that early age, a good Latin and Greek scholar, and a fair mathematician; and would have prepared him to enter one of the German Universities, had not the summons come that cut short the good father's work on earth, and carried him to his eternal home.

"It was soon after the loss of this kind friend, who had been the strong prop of my weakness, the wise counsellor of my ignorance, that my own health began to fail. The seeds of pulmonary consumption, inherited from my mother, began to develop, and nothing could arrest their progress. For the last three years I have been an invalid, growing worse and worse every year. Perhaps in no other climate, under no other treatment, could I have lived so long as I have been permitted to live here by the help of the pure air and the grape cure.

"My boy, now fifteen years of age, is everything that I could wish him to be, except in one respect. He will not consent to enter the church. He wants to be a soldier, poor lad! Well, we cannot coerce him into a life of sanctity and self-denial. Such a life must always be a voluntary sacrifice. Neither do I wish to cross him, now that I am on my death-bed and doomed so soon to leave him.

"In these last days on earth, lying on my dying bed, travailing for his good, it has come to me like an inspiration that I must send him to his father. I must not leave him friendless in the world. And now that the priest Antonio has long passed away, and I am so soon to follow, he will have no friends except these poor, helpless Italian peasants among whom he has been reared. Therefore I must send him, in the hope that you will recognize him by his exact likeness to yourself, and prove his identity as your son, by all the testimony you can be sure to gather in Paris and at San Vito. I have written this long letter, in the intervals between pain and fever, during the last few weeks.

"Yesterday, my faithful physician warned me that my days on earth had dwindled down to hours; that I might pass away at any moment now, and had therefore best attend to any necessary business that I might wish to settle.

"This warning admonishes me to finish and close my letter. I end as I began, by swearing to you, by all the hopes of salvation in a dying woman, that Archibald Scott is your own son. You can prove this to your own satisfaction by coming to San Vito and examining the church register as to the dates of his birth, baptism, and so forth; by which you will find that he was born just five months after I left your roof, and just six months after our return from our long yachting cruise, and the renewal of my acquaintance with Count de Volaski, at the British minister's dinner. You see, by these circumstances, there cannot be even the shadow of a doubt as to his true parentage.

"I repeat, that I have not told the boy the secret of his birth; to have done so might have been to have embittered his mind against you, and I would not on my death-bed do anything to sow enmity between father and son.

"I leave to yourself to tell him, if you should ever think proper to do so, and with what explanations you may please to add.

"I have constituted you his sole guardian, and trustee of the moderate property I bequeath him. He wishes to enter the army, and he will have money sufficient to purchase a commission and support himself respectably in some good regiment. I hope that when the proper time comes you will forward his ambition in this direction.

"And so I leave him in your hands, for my feeble strength fails, and I can only add my name.



CHAPTER XLII.

HER SON.

The last lines of this sad letter were almost illegible in their faintness and irregularity; and the tangled skein of light scratches that stood proxy for a signature could never have been deciphered by the skill of man.

The Duke of Hereward had grown ten years older in the half hour he had spent in the perusal of this fatal letter. He was no longer only sixty-five years of age, and a "fine old English gentleman;" he seemed fully seventy-five years old, and a broken, decrepit, ruined man. In fact, the first blow had fallen upon that fine intellect whose subsequent eccentricities gained for him the sobriquet of the mad duke.

The hand that held the fatal letter fell heavily by his side; his head drooped upon his chest; he did not move or speak for many minutes.

His young visitor watched him with curiosity and interest that gradually grew into anxiety. At length he made a motion to attract the duke's attention—dropped a book upon the floor, picked it up, and arose to apologize.

The duke started as from a profound reverie, sighed heavily, passed his handkerchief across his brow, and finally wheeled his chair around, and looked at his visitor.

No! there could be no question about it; the boy was the living image of what he himself had been at that age, as all his portraits could prove! and his eldest son, his rightful heir, stood before him, but forever and irrecoverably disinherited and delegalized by his own rash and cruel act.

The young man stood up as if naturally waiting to hear what the duke might have to say about his mother's letter.

But the duke did not immediately allude to the letter.

"Where are you stopping, my young friend?" he asked, in as calm a voice as he could command.

"At 'Langhams,' your grace," respectfully answered the youth.

"Very well. I will call and see you at your rooms to-morrow at eleven, and we will talk over your mother's plans and see what can be done for you," said the duke, as he touched the bell, and sank back heavily in his chair.

The young man understood that the interview was closed, and he was about to take his leave, when the door opened and a footman appeared.

"Truman, attend this young gentleman to the breakfast-room, and place refreshments before him. I hope that you will take something before you go, sir," said the duke, kindly.

"Thanks. I trust your grace will permit me to decline. It is scarce two hours since I breakfasted," said the boy, with a bow.

"As you please, young sir," answered the duke.

The youth then bowed and withdrew, attended by the footman.

The duke watched them through the door, listened to their retreating steps down the hall, and then threw his clasped hands to his head, groaning:

"Great Heaven! What have I done? What foul injustice to her, what cruel wrong to him. I thank her that she has never told him! I can never do so! Nay, Heaven forbid that he should ever even suspect the truth! Nor must I ever permit him to come here again; or to any house of mine, where the duchess, where his brother, where every servant even must see the likeness he bears to the family, and—discover, or, at least, suspect the secret!"

Meanwhile the youth, respectfully attended by the footman, left the house.

As he entered his cab that was waiting at the door, a bitter, bitter change passed over his fine face; the fair brow darkened, the blue eyes contracted and glittered, the lips were firmly compressed for an instant, and then he murmured to himself:

"That they should think a secret like this could be buried, concealed from me, the most interested of all to find it out! Was ever son so accursed as I am? Other sons have been disinherited, outlawed—but I! I have been delegalized and degraded from my birth!"

The fine mouth closed with a spasmodic jerk, the brow grew darker, the eyes glittered with intenser fire. He resumed:

"It will be difficult, if not impossible, but I will be restored to my rights, or I will ruin and exterminate the ducal house of Hereward! I am the eldest son of my father; the only son of his first marriage. I am the heir not only of my father, but of the seven dukes and twenty barons that preceded him, to whom their patent of nobility was granted, to them and their heirs forever! 'Their heirs forever!' It was granted, therefore, to me and to all of my direct line! Each baron and duke had but his life-interest in his barony or dukedom, and could not alienate it from his heirs by will. It was an infamous, a fraudulent subterfuge to divorce my poor mother, and so delegalize me a few months before my birth. But—I will bide my time! This false heir may die. Such things do happen. And then, as there is no other heir to his title and estates, my father may acknowledge his eldest son, and try to undo the evil he has done. But if this should not happen, or if my father, who is old, should die, and this false heir inherit, then I will spend every shilling I have inherited from my mother to gain my own. I will have my rights, though I convict my father of a fraudulent conspiracy, and it requires an act of Parliament to effect my restoration! And if, after all, this wrong cannot be righted—although it can be abundantly proved that I am the only son of my father's first marriage, and the rightful heir of his dukedom, if, after all, I cannot be restored to my position, I will prove the mortal enemy of the race of Scott, and the destruction of the ducal house of Hereward. Meanwhile I must watch and wait; use this old man as my friend, who will not acknowledge himself as my father!"

These bitter musings lasted until the cab drew up before Langham's Hotel, and the youth got out and went into the house.

The boy, wrong in many instances, was right in this, that the secret of his birth could not be concealed from him.

His poor mother had never divulged it to him, never meant him to know that, the knowledge of which, she thought, would only make him unhappy; but she had told no falsehoods, put forth no false showing to hide it irrecoverably from him.

She was known among her poor Italian neighbors as Signora Valeria, and supposed by them to be the widow of that handsome young Pole to whom they had seen her married, and from whom they had seen her torn by her father, some years before. Of the Duke of Hereward, her second husband, and of her divorce from him, they knew nothing. But she was known to her father-confessor, to her news-agent, and later to her son, as Valerie de la Motte Scott, for though no longer entitled to bear the latter name, she had tacitly allowed it to cling to her.

Now as to how the boy discovered the secret that was designed to be concealed from him.

When with childish curiosity he had inquired, his mother had told him that he had lost his father in infancy; and the boy understood that the loss was by death: but as time passed, and the lad questioned more particularly concerning his parentage, his mother, in repeating that he had lost his father in infancy, added that the loss had been attended with distressing circumstances, and begged him to desist in his inquiries. This only stimulated the interest and curiosity of the youth, and kept him on the qui vive for any word, or look, or circumstance that might give him a clew to the mystery. And thus it followed that with a mother so simple and unguarded as Valerie, and a son so cunning and watchful as Archibald, the secret she wished to keep be soon discovered. But he kept his own counsel for the sake of gaining still more information. And, at length, the full revelation and confirmation of all that he had suspected came to him in a manner and by means his mother had never foreseen or provided against.

Valerie had made a will leaving all her property to her son, and appointing the Duke of Hereward as his guardian. After her death, all her papers and other effects had to be overhauled and examined and her son took care to read every paper that he was free to handle. Among these was a copy of the will of the late Waldemar de Volaski, by which he bequeathed to Valerie de la Motte Scott, Duchess of Hereward, all his personal property.

Here was both a revelation and a mystery! Valerie de la Motte Scott, his most unhappy mother, Duchess of Hereward! and his guardian, appointed by her—the Duke of Hereward!

Who was the Duke of Hereward? That he was a great English nobleman was evident! But aside from that, who and what was he?

The boy was in a fever of excitement. It was of no use to ask any of his poor Italian neighbors, for they knew less than he did. He had heard of a mammoth London annual, called Burke's Peerage, which would tell all about the living and dead nobility; but there was no copy of it anywhere in reach.

However, his mother's dying directions had been that he should proceed at once to England, and report himself to his guardian, that very Duke of Hereward so mysteriously connected with his destiny.

Intense curiosity stimulating him, he hurried his departure, and after traveling day and night arrived in London on the evening of the last day of May.

He waited only to engage a room at Langham's and change his dress, and partake of a slight luncheon, before he ordered a cab, drove to the nearest bookstore, and purchased a copy of Burke's Peerage for that current year.

As soon as he found himself alone in his cab again, he tore the paper off the book and eagerly turned to the article Hereward, and read:

"Hereward, Duke of—Archibald-Alexander-John Scott, Marquis and Earl of Arondelle in the peerage of England, Viscount Lone and Baron Scott in the peerage of Scotland, and a baronet; born Jan. 1st, 1795; succeeded his father as seventh duke, Feb. 1st, 1840; married, March 15th 1845, Valerie, only daughter of the Baron de la Motte; divorced from her grace Feb. 13, 1846; married secondly, April 1st, 1846, Lady Augusta-Victoria, eldest daughter of the Earl of Banff, by whom he has:

"Archibald-Alexander-John, Marquis of Arondelle."

Then followed a long list of other children, girls and boys, of whom the only record was birth and death. Not one of them, except the young Marquis of Arondelle, had lived to be seven years old.

Then followed the long lineage of the family, going over a glorious history of eight centuries.

The youth glanced over the lineage, but soon recurred to the opening paragraphs.

"'Married, March 15th, 1845, Valerie, only daughter of the Baron de la Motte.' That was my poor, dear mother!

"'Divorced from her grace, Feb, 13th, 1846,' He divorced her, and what for! She was a saint on earth, I know! Perhaps it was for being that she was divorced! Let us see. 'Married secondly, April 1st, 1846, Lady Augusta Victoria, eldest daughter of the Earl of Banff.' Ah, ha! that was it! He divorced my beloved mother for the same season that the tryant Henry VIII. divorced Queen Catherine, because he was in love with another woman whom he wished to marry!"

(The study of history teaches as much knowledge of the world as does personal experience.)

"But here again," continued the youth. "He divorced my dear mother on the 13th of February, married his Anne Boylen on the 1st of April—appropriate day—and I was born on the 15th of the same month! Yes! my angel mother and my infant self branded with infamy two months before my birth, and by the very man whom nature and law should have constrained to be our protector! Will I ever forgive it? No! When I do, may Heaven never forgive me!"

As the boy made this vow he laid down the "Royal and Noble Stud-Book," and took up the bulky letter that his mother had entrusted to him to be delivered to the Duke of Hereward. He studied it a moment, then had a little struggle with his sense of right, and finally murmuring:

"Forgive me, gentle mother; but having discovered so much of your secret, I must know it all, even for your sake, and for the love and respect I bear you."

He broke the seal and read the whole of the historical letter from beginning to end.

Then he carefully re-folded and re-sealed the letter, so as to leave no trace of the violence that has been done in opening it.

Then he sat for a long time with his elbows on the table before him, and his head bowed upon his hands while tear after tear rolled slowly down his cheeks for the sad fate of that young, broken hearted mother who had perished in her early prime.

The next day, as we have seen, he went to Hereward House and presented his mother's letter to the duke. He had watched his grace while the latter was reading the letter. He had foolishly expected to see some sign of remorse, some demonstration of affection. But he had been disappointed. He had been received only as the son of some humble deceased friend, consigned to the great duke's care. His tender mood had changed to a vindictive one, and he had sworn to be restored to his rights, or to devote his life to effect the ruin and extermination of the house of Hereward.



CHAPTER XLIII.

THE DUKE'S WARD.

The next morning, at the appointed hour, the Duke of Hereward drove to Langham's, and sent up his card to Mr. John Scott.

The youth himself, to show the greater respect, came down to the public parlor where the duke waited, and after most deferentially welcoming his visitor, conducted him to his own private apartment.

"I see by your mother's letter, as well as by her will, that she has done me the honor to appoint me your guardian," said the elder man, as soon as they were seated alone together, and cautiously eyeing the younger, so as to detect, if possible, how much or how little he knew or suspected of the true relationship between them.

"My mother did me the honor to consign me to your grace's guardianship, if you will be so condescending as to accept the charge," replied the youth, with grave courtesy and in his turn eyeing the duke to see, if possible, what might be his feelings and intentions toward himself.

The duke bowed and then said:

"I would like to carry out your mother's views and your own wishes, if possible. She mentioned in her letter the army as a career for you. Do you wish some years hence to take a commission in the army?"

"I did, your grace: but now I prefer to leave myself entirely in your grace's hands," cautiously replied the youth.

"But in the matter of choosing a profession you must be left free. No one but yourself can decide upon your own calling with any hope of ultimate success. Much mischief is done by the officiousness of parents and guardians in directing their sons or wards into professions or callings for which they have neither taste nor talent," said the duke.

The youth smiled slightly; he could but see that the duke was utterly perplexed as to his own course of conduct, and to cover his confusion he was only talking for talk's sake.

"You will let me know your own wishes on this subject, I hope, young sir," continued the elder.

"My only wish on the subject is to leave myself in your grace's hands. I feel confident that whatever your grace may think right to do with me, will be the best possible thing for me," replied the boy, with more meaning in his manner, as well as in his words, than he had intended to betray.

The duke looked keenly at him; but his fair impassive face was unreadable.

"Well, at all events, it is, perhaps, time enough for two or three years to come to talk of a profession for you. Would you like to enter one of the universities? Are you prepared to do so?" suddenly inquired the guardian.

"I would like to go to Oxford. But whether I am prepared to do so, I do not know. I do not know what is required. I have a fair knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and of the higher mathematics. I was in course of preparation to enter one of the German universities, when my good tutor, Father Antonio, died," replied the youth.

The duke dropped his gray head upon his chest and mused awhile, and then said:

"I think that you had better read with a private tutor for a while; you will then soon recover what you may have lost since the death of your good teacher, and make such further progress as may fit you to go to Oxford at the next term. What do you think? Let me know your views, young sir."

"Thanks, your grace; I will read with any tutor you may be pleased to recommend," respectfully answered the youth.

"You are certainly a most manageable ward," said the guardian, dryly, and with, perhaps, a shade of distrust in his manner.

The boy bowed.

"Well, since you place yourself so implicitly in my hands, I must justify your faith as well as your mother's by doing the very best I can for you. There is a very worthy man, the Vicar of Greencombe, on one of my estates, down in Sussex, near the sea. He is a ripe scholar, a graduate of Trinity College, Oxford, and occasionally augments his moderate salary by preparing youth for college. I will direct my secretary to write to him this morning to know if he can receive you, and I will let you know the result in a day or two."

"Thanks, your grace."

"And now how are you going to employ your time while waiting here?"

"By taking a good guide-book, your grace, and going through London. Your grace will remember that I am a perfect stranger here, and even one of your great historical monuments, such as Westminster Abbey or the Tower, has interest enough in it to occupy a student for a week."

"I commend your taste in the occupation you have sketched out for your time. I must request you, however, to take great care of yourself, and to be here every day at this hour, as I shall make it a point to look in upon you."

"Thanks, your grace."

"And now good-day," said the visitor, offering his hand, and then abruptly leaving the room.

The youth, however, with the most deferential manner, attended him down stairs and to his carriage, and only took his leave, with a bow, when the footman closed the door.

Again as soon as his back was turned upon his father, the youth's face changed and darkened, and—

"I bide my time—I bide my time," he muttered to himself as he re-ascended the stairs.

He had not deceived his guardian, however, as to the manner in which he meant to spend his time while in London. At this time of his unfortunate position he had not yet contracted any evil habits, and he had a genuine liking for interesting antiquities. So, after partaking of a light luncheon, he went out, guide-book in hand and spent the whole day in studying the architectural glories and the antique monuments in Westminster Abbey.

The second day he passed among the gloomy dungeons and bloody records of the Tower of London.

On the third day he received another visit from the Duke of Hereward, who came to tell him the Reverend Mr. Simpson, the Vicar of Greencombe, had returned a favorable answer to his letter, and would be happy to receive Mr. Scott in his family.

"Now I do not wish to hurry you my dear boy; but I think the sooner you resume your long-neglected studies, the better it will be for you," said the duke, speaking kindly, but watching cautiously, as was his constant habit when conversing with this unacknowledged son.

"I am ready to go the moment your grace commands," answered the young man.

"I issue no commands to you, my boy. I will give you a letter of introduction to Dr. Simpson, which you may go down and deliver at your own leisure. If you choose to spend a week longer in London to see what is to be seen, why do so, of course. If not, you can run down to Greencombe to-day or to-morrow. It is about two hours' journey by the London and South Coast Railroad from the London Bridge Station."

"I will go down this afternoon."

"That is prompt. That is right. All you do my boy, all I see of you, commends you more and more to my approval and esteem. Go this afternoon, by all means. I will myself meet you at the station, to see you off and leave with you my letter of introduction. Stay; by what train shall you go? Ah! you do not know anything about the trains. Ring the bell."

The youth complied.

A waiter appeared, a Bradshaw was ordered and consulted, and the five P. M. express fixed upon as the train by which the youth should leave London.

The duke then took leave of the boy, with an admonition of punctuality.

"Well," said John Scott to himself, as soon as he was left alone, "if my father gives me nothing else, he is certainly disposed to give me my own way. Perhaps in time he may give me all my rights. If so, well. If not—I bide my time," he repeated.

At the appointed hour the guardian and ward met at the depot.

The duke placed the promised letter in the youth's hand, saw him into a first-class carriage, and there bade him good-by.

John Scott sped down into Sussex as fast as the express train could carry him, and the Duke of Hereward went back to Hereward House, much relieved by the departure of the youth, whose presence in London had seemed like an incubus upon him.

The deeply injured boy had departed; but—so also had the father's peace of mind, forever! Certainly he was now relieved of all fear of an unpleasant ecclaircissement; but he was not freed from remorse for the past, or from dread for the future.

He told the duchess that day at dinner that a ward had been left to his guardianship, that this ward was, in fact, the son of a near relation, and bore the family name, which made it the more incumbent upon him to accept the charge; and, finally, that he had sent the boy down to Dr. Simpson, at the Greencombe Vicarage, to read for the university.

The duchess was not in the least degree interested in the duke's ward, and rather wondered that he should have taken the trouble to tell her anything about him; but the duke did so to provide for the future contingency of an accidental meeting between the duchess and the boy, so that she might suppose him to be a blood relation, and thus understand the family likeness without the danger of suspecting a truth that could not be explained to her.

But the duke could not silence the voice of conscience and affection. The deeply-wronged boy whom he had sent away was his own first-born son—the son of his first marriage and of his only love; and he had wronged him beyond the power of man to help! He was the rightful heir of his title and estates, yet he could never inherit them; he had been delegalized by his father's own hasty, reckless and cruel act; and for no fault of the boy's own—before he was capable of committing any fault—before his birth—he was disinherited.

All this so worked upon the duke's conscience that he could not give his mind to his ordinary vocations.

But about this time, the duchess, through the death of a near relative, inherited a very large fortune, principally in money.

With this she wished to purchase an estate in Scotland. And so, when Parliament rose, the duke and duchess went to Scotland, personally to inspect certain estates that were for sale there; for the duchess said that, in the matter of choosing a home to live in, she would trust no eyes but her own.

It seemed, however, that neither of the seats in the market pleased the lady, and she had given up her quest in despair, when the duke suggested that, before leaving Scotland, they should make a visit to the famous historical ruins of Lone Castle, in Lone, on Lone Lake, which had been in the Scott-Hereward family for eight centuries.

It was while they were tarrying at the little hotel of the "Hereward Arms," and making daily excursions in a boat across the lake to the isle and to the ruins, that the stupendous idea of restoring the castle occurred to the duke's mind—and not only restoring it as it had stood centuries before, a great, impregnable Highland fortress, but by bringing all the architectural and engineering art and skill of the nineteenth century to bear upon the subject, transforming the ruined castle and rocky isle and mountain-bound lake into the earthly paradise and century's wonder it afterwards became.

What vast means were used, what fortunes were sacrificed, what treasures were drawn into the maelstrom of this mad enterprise, has already been shown.

It is probable, however, that the duke would not have thrown himself so insanely into this work had it not seemed a means of escaping the torture of his own thoughts.

He could restore the old Highland stronghold, and transform the barren, water-girt rock into a garden of Eden; but he could not restore the rights of his own disinherited son.

He had consulted some among the most eminent lawyers in England, putting the case suppositiously, or as the case of another father and son, and the unanimous opinion given was that there could be no help for such a case as theirs; and even though the father had had no other heir, he could not reclaim this disinherited one.

It was not with unmingled regret that the duke heard this opinion given. It certainly relieved him from the fearful duty of having to oppose the duchess and all her family, as he would have been obliged to do, had it been possible to restore his eldest son to his rights; for the duchess would not have stood by quietly and seen her son set aside in favor of the elder brother.

The duke spoke of his ward from time to time, so that in case the duchess should ever meet him, or hear of him from others, she could not regard him as a mystery that had been concealed from her, or look upon his likeness to the family with suspicion.

But the duchess seemed perfectly indifferent to the duke's ward, or if she did interest herself, it was only slightly or good-naturedly, as when she answered the duke's remarks, one day, by saying:

"If the dear boy is a relative of the family, however distant, and your ward besides, why don't you have him home for the holidays?"

"Oh, schoolboys at home for the holidays are always a nuisance. He will go to Wales with Simpson and his lads, when they go for their short vacation," answered the duke, not unpleased that his wife took kindly to the notion of his ward.

In due time the youth entered Oxford. The duke spoke of the fact to the duchess. Then she answered not so good-humoredly as before; indeed, there was a shade of annoyance and anxiety in her tones, as she said:

"Oxford is very expensive, and a young man may make it quite ruinous. I hope the youth's friends have left him means enough of his own. I would not speak of such a matter," she added apologetically, "only the restoration of Lone seems so to swallow up all our resources as to leave us nothing for charitable objects."

"The youth has ample means for educational purposes, and to establish him in some profession. Of course, he cannot indulge in any of those university extravagances and dissipations that are the destruction of so many fine young men; but, then, he is not that kind of lad; a steady, studious boy, brought up by—a widowed mother and a priest," answered the duke, with just a slight faltering in his voice, in the latter clause of his speech.

"Such boys are more apt than others to develop into the wildest young men," replied the lady; and circumstances proved that she was right.

John Scott, at Trinity College, Oxford, passed as the grand-nephew of the Duke of Hereward, and the next in succession, after the young Earl of Arondelle to the dukedom.

The young Earl of Arondelle was still at Eton. And the duke determined to send him from Eton to Cambridge, instead of Oxford, where John Scott was at college; for the father of these two boys wished them never to meet!

At Oxford, John Scott, as the grand-nephew of the Duke of Hereward, bearing an unmistakable likeness to the family, and being, besides, a young man of pleasing address, soon won his way among the most exclusive of the aristocrats there; and pride and vanity tempted him to vie with them in extravagant and riotous living!

His income only was limited, his credit was unlimited. When his money fell short, he ran into debt; and at the end of the first term his liabilities were alarming, or would have been so to a more sensitive mind.

It is true, the amount was much greater than his inexperience had led him to expect; but he only smiled grimly when he had all his bills before him, and had estimated the sum total, and he said to himself:

"If my allowance will not support me here like a gentleman, my father must make up the deficiency, that is all!"

The Duke of Hereward was indeed confounded when his ward wrote to him and told him boldly that he wanted fifteen hundred pounds for immediate necessities—namely, twelve hundred for the liquidation of debts, and three hundred for traveling expenses.

But could he scold the poor, disinherited boy, who, kept to himself at Oxford, had doubtless fallen among thieves and been mercilessly fleeced.

No; he would pay these debts out of his own pocket, and write the young man a kind letter of warning against the university sharks.

The duke carried out this resolution, and John Scott, freed from debt, and with three hundred pounds in his possession, went on a holiday tour through the country.

He had heard at Oxford of the rising glories of Lone, and determined to take his holiday in that neighborhood.

It happened that the Duke and Duchess of Hereward, with the Marquis of Arondelle, and their attendants, went that summer to Baden-Baden; so when the Oxonion arrived at the "Hereward Arms," in the hamlet of Lone, and, from his age and his exact likeness to the family, was mistaken for the heir, there was no one to set the people right on the subject.