brilliant noble
who became the stern reformer of La Trappe. And while thus gloomily
meditating, the letter of the poor Louise Duval was forgotten. She whose
existence had so troubled, and crossed, and partly marred the lives of
others,--she, scarcely dead, and already forgotten by her nearest kin.
Well--had she not forgotten, put wholly out of her mind, all that was
due to those much nearer to her than is an uncle to a niece?

The short, bitter, sunless day was advancing towards its decline before
Victor roused himself with a quick impatient start from his reverie, and
took forth the letter from the dead nun.

It began with expressions of gratitude, of joy at the thought that she
should see him again before she died, thank him for his past kindness,
and receive, she trusted, his assurance that he would attend to her
last remorseful injunctions. I pass over much that followed in the
explanation of events in her life sufficiently known to the reader. She
stated, as the strongest reason why she had refused the hand of Louvier,
her knowledge that she should in due time become a mother--a fact
concealed from Victor, secure that he would then urge her not to annul
her informal marriage, but rather insist on the ceremonies that would
render it valid. She touched briefly on her confidential intimacy with
Madame Marigny, the exchange of name and papers, her confinement in
the neighbourhood of Aix, the child left to the care of the nurse,
the journey to Munich to find the false Louise Duval was no more. The
documents obtained through the agency of her easy-tempered kinsman, the
late Marquis de Rochebriant, and her subsequent domestication in the
house of the von Rudesheims,--all this it is needless to do more here
than briefly recapitulate. The letter then went on: "While thus kindly
treated by the family with whom nominally a governess, I was on the
terms of a friend with Signor Ludovico Cicogna, an Italian of noble
birth. He was the only man I ever cared for. I loved him with frail
human passion. I could not tell him, my true history. I could not tell
him that I had a child; such intelligence would have made him renounce
me at once. He had a daughter, still but an infant, by a former
marriage, then brought up in France. He wished to take her to his house,
and his second wife to supply the place of her mother. What was I to
do with the child I had left near Aix? While doubtful and distracted, I
read an advertisement in the jour