herself; and
consideration, too, for the sons, for whom the discovery was only less
bad than for us, as they had less to lose. Hester herself hardly fully
understood what it all involved, and it only gradually grew on her.

That winter her mother fell ill, and Mr. Lea felt it right that the
small property she had had for her life should be properly secured to
her sons, according to the division their father had intended. So a
lawyer was brought from Montreal and her will was made. Thus another
person knew about it, and he was much struck, and explained to Hester
that she was really a lady of rank, and probably the only child of her
father who had any legal claim to his estates. Lea, with a good deal
of the old American Republican temper, would not be stirred up. He
despised lords and ladies, and would none of it; but the lawyer held
that it would be doing wrong not to preserve the record. Hester had
grown excited, and seconded him; and one day, when Lea was out, the
lawyer brought a magistrate to take Mrs. Dayman's affidavit as to all
her past history--marriage witnesses and all. She was a good deal
overcome and agitated, and quite implored Hester never to use the
knowledge against her father; but she must have been always a passive,
docile being, and they made her tell all that was wanted, and sign her
deposition, as she had signed her will, as Faith Trevor, commonly known
as Faith Dayman.

She did not live many days after. It was on the 3rd of February, 1836,
that she died; and in the course of the summer Hester had a son, who
throve as none of her babies had done.

Then she lay and brooded over him and the rights she fancied he was
deprived of, till she worked herself up to a strong and fixed purpose,
and insisted upon making all known to her father. Now that her mother
was gone she persuaded herself that he had been a cruel, faithless
tyrant, who had wilfully deserted his young wife.

Joel Lea would not listen to her. Why should she wish to make his son
a good-for-nothing English lord? That was his view. Nothing but
misery, distress, and temptation could come of not letting things
alone. He held to that, and there were no means forthcoming either of
coming to England to present herself. The family were well to do, but
had no ready money to lay out on a passage across the Atlantic. Nor
would Hester wait. She had persuaded herself that a letter would be
suppressed, even if she had known how to addres