s I sought to comfort and to delude myself.

The next day Janet and I left Aix-la-Chapelle and returned to England.
But it was impossible for me to banish the dreadful thought that Janet
was not legally my wife; that could she even guess the secret lodged in
my breast she would be lost to me forever, even though she died of
the separation (you know well how tenderly she loved me). My nature
underwent a silent revolution. I had previously cherished the ambition
common to most men in public life,--the ambition for fame, for place,
for power. That ambition left me; I shrank from the thought of becoming
too well known, lest Louise or her connections, as yet ignorant of my
new name, might more easily learn what the world knew; namely that I had
previously borne another name,--the name of her husband,--and finding me
wealthy and honoured, might hereafter be tempted to claim for herself or
her daughter the ties she adjured for both while she deemed me poor and
despised. But partly my conscience, partly the influence of the angel
by my side, compelled me to seek whatever means of doing good to others
position and circumstances placed at my disposal. I was alarmed
when even such quiet exercise of mind and fortune acquired a sort of
celebrity. How pain fully I shrank from it! The world attributed my
dread of publicity to unaffected modesty. The world praised me, and
I knew myself an impostor. But the years stole on. I heard no more of
Louise or her child, and my fears gradually subsided. Yet I was consoled
when the two children born to me by Janet died in their infancy. Had
they lived, who can tell whether something might not have transpired to
prove them illegitimate.

I must hasten on. At last came the great and crushing calamity of my
life,--I lost the woman who was my all in all. At least she was spared
the discovery that would have deprived me of the right of tending her
deathbed, and leaving within her tomb a place vacant for myself.

But after the first agonies that followed her loss, the conscience I had
so long sought to tranquillize became terribly reproachful. Louise had
forfeited all right to my consideration, but my guiltless child had
not done so. Did it live still? If so, was it not the heir to my
fortunes,--the only child left to me? True, I have the absolute right to
dispose of my wealth: it is not in land; it is not entailed: but was
not the daughter I had forsaken morally the first claimant; was no
reparation