was I involved
in this splendid--degradation, the austere would call it, though
degradation I never held it to be. Even appearances were preserved;
for, before my wretched son was born, I was married to one of the pages
of a German court, who was sixty years of age, and properly submissive
and distant. To the English ear, this sounds like a confession of
infamy. Let me not, Ralph, endeavour to justify it to you--I was taught
otherwise--now, if I could, I would not regret it. Your father, then an
only son, sometimes visited at the house of the person over whose
establishment I presided, and--and, mark me, Ralph, injuriously as you
must now think of me, I presided over but one. Deride me not when I
tell that to that distinguished personage I was chaste."

She paused, and I thought that her voice faltered strangely, and that
the assertion died upon her lips, and I made no reply. I was by no
means astonished at this detail. I could only look upon her most
anxiously, and await her future disclosures.

"I have," she continued, "lived for the world, and found it a glorious
one. The husband of my heart, and the husband of ceremony, have long
both been dead. I enjoy a competency--nay, much more--and yet, they
talk to me of dying. To-morrow will decide upon my fate. I have lived
a good life, according to my capabilities--it is no delusion--but,
should the sentence of to-morrow's consultation be fatal, then the
lawyer and the clergyman--"

"And why not to-day?"

"Because it is ours, Ralph, or rather, yours. Well, your mother was of
good, though not of exalted, family--the daughter of a considerable
freeholder in our neighbourhood. She was the eldest of many children,
and the most beautiful born of all in the county. Her father sent her
to London; and she became thus, for her station and the period, over
educated. She foolishly preferred the fashionable, and refined, and
luxurious service in a nobleman's family to a noble independence in her
honest father's spacious house. It was her mistake and her ruin.

"Ralph! I loved your mother--you know it--but as a governess in the
Duke of E's family, I hated and feared her. I don't think that she was
more beautiful than I, but he--he whom I will never mention--began to be
of that opinion--at least, I trembled. Reginald Rathelin loved her--
wooed her; I entered with eagerness into his schemes--his success was my
security. Miss Daventry at first repulsed me; but, at