oon
dissipated his wife's fortune, become a widower with one child--a
girl--and fallen into great distress. He came to my father, begging for
pecuniary aid. My father, though by no means rich, consented to allow
him a yearly pension, on condition that he never revealed to his child
her connection with our family. The man agreed to the condition, and
called at my father's lawyer quarterly for his annuity. But the lawyer
informed me that this deduction from my income had ceased, that M. Duval
had not for a year called or sent for the sum due to him, and that he
must therefore be dead. One day my valet informed me that a young lady
wished to see me--in those days young ladies very often called on me. I
desired her to be shown in. There entered a young creature, almost of my
own age, who, to my amazement saluted me as uncle. This was the child of
my half-sister. Her father had been dead several months, fulfilling very
faithfully the condition on which he had held his pension, and the girl
never dreaming of the claims that, if wise, poor child, she ought not
to have cared for, viz.,--to that obsolete useless pauper birthright,
a branch on the family tree of a French noble. But in pinch of
circumstance, and from female curiosity, hunting among the papers her
father had left for some clue to the reasons for the pension he had
received, she found letters from her mother, letters from my father,
which indisputably proved that she was grandchild to the fue Vicomte de
Mauleon, and niece to myself. Her story as told to me was very pitiable.
Conceiving herself to be nothing higher in birth than daughter to this
drawing-master, at his death, poor, penniless orphan that she was, she
had accepted the hand of an English student of medicine whom she did not
care for. Miserable with this man, on finding by the documents I refer
to that she was my niece, she came to me for comfort and counsel. What
counsel could I or any man give to her but to make the best of what
had happened, and live with her husband? But then she started another
question. It seems that she had been talking with some one, I think her
landlady, or some other woman with whom she had made acquaintance--was
she legally married to this man? Had he not entrapped her ignorance into
a false marriage? This became a grave question, and I sent at once to
my lawyer. On hearing the circumstances, he at once declared that the
marriage was not legal according to the laws of France. But