they ever happy
wives and mothers?

I have thought much on this subject, because I, who write this story,
seem to the world one of the most commonplace people in it, and yet I
have lived, from the time I was a child, in the midst of a tragedy dark
as any that ever saddened this fair land.

No one knows it, no one guesses it. People talk of troubles, of
romances, of sad stories and painful histories before me, but no one
ever guessed that I have known perhaps the saddest of all. My heart
learned to ache as the first lesson it learned in life.

When I think of those unhappy children who go about the world with so
dark a secret locked in their hearts, I think of myself, and what I hold
locked in my heart.

Read for yourself, dear reader, and tell me if you think there have been
many fates in this world harder than mine.

My Name is Laura Tayne, and my home Tayne Abbey, in the grand old
County of Kent. The Taynes were of good family, not very ancient--the
baronetcy is quite a modern one, dating from George the First--but Tayne
Abbey is one of the grandest old buildings in England. Whenever I looked
at it I thought of those beautiful, picturesque, haunted houses that one
sees in Christmas annuals, with Christmas lights shining from the great
windows. I am sorry to say that I know very little of architecture. I
could not describe Tayne Abbey; it was a dark, picturesque, massive
building; the tall towers were covered with ivy, the large windows were
wreathed with flowers of every hue. In some parts of sweet, sunny Kent
the flowers grow as though they were in a huge hothouse; they did so at
Tayne Abbey, for the front stood to the west, and there were years when
it seemed to be nothing but summer.

The great oriel windows--the deep bay windows, large as small rooms--the
carved oaken panels, the finely painted ceilings, the broad corridors,
the beautiful suites of rooms--all so bright, light and lofty--the
old-fashioned porch and the entrance hall, the grand sweep of terraces
one after another, the gardens, the grounds, the park, were all
perfection in their way. To make the picture quite complete, close to
us--joined, indeed, by a subterranean passage, for the existence of
which no one could account--stood the ruins of what had once been the
real Abbey of Tayne--a fine old abbey that, in the time of "bluff King
Hal," had been inhabited by the monks of St. Benedict. They were driven
away, and the abbey and lands were give