length, I
overcame her repugnance--many ladies, notwithstanding my ambiguous
position, awed by the rank of my protector, received me--we became
friends. The beautiful governess eloped--I managed everything--they
were married. I was myself a witness of the ceremony."

"Thank God!" I exclaimed, fervently.

"Reginald was wild and dissipated, poor and unprincipled--he cajoled his
wife, and suffered her again to return to her menial station in the
duke's family. In due time there was another journey necessary. It was
when you were born at Reading. `A little while, and yet a little
while,' was the constant plea of the now solicited husband, `and I will
own you, my dear Elizabeth, and boast of you before all the world.'"

"My poor mother!"

"About two years after this marriage, Sir Luke, the father of Reginald,
fell ill, and the neglect of the husband became only something a little
short of actual desertion. Your mother had a proud as well as a loving
spirit. She wrote to the father of Reginald--she interested the duke in
her favour--she was now as anxious for publicity as concealment; but the
expectant heir defied us all. He confessed himself a villain, and
avowed that he had entrapped your mother by a fictitious marriage."

"And _he_ my father!--but you, _you, her friend_?"

"He deceived me also. He declared the man who pretended to perform the
marriage ceremony was not in holy orders. He dared us to prove it. His
father, bred up in prejudice of birth and family, did not urge the son
to do justice to your mother, but satisfied his conscience by providing
very amply for yourself: he first took credit to himself for thus having
done his duty, then the sacrament, and died.

"Your father, now Sir Reginald, in due time proposed for the richest
heiress in the three adjacent counties, and was rejected with scorn. We
made a strong party against him--the seat of his ancestors became
hateful to him--he went abroad. His princely mansion was locked up--his
estates left to the management of a grinding steward; and the world
utterly forgot the self-created alien from his country."

"Then, alas! after all, I am illegitimate."

"And if you were?--but, methinks, that you are now feeling more for
yourself than your mother."

"Oh no, no! tell me of her!"

"After this _expose_, she lived some few years respected in the duke's
family; but she changed her name--home to her father's she would never
go--no tidings ever re