explained how
my father was shipped off from England between life and death; and how,
when he recovered, he found his uncle dying, and the title and property
coming to him.

"And he married!" she said, with a bewildered look; and Bertram told
her that he had married Lady Mary Lupton--as his uncle and father had
wished--and how we four were their children. I can fancy how kindly
and tenderly Bertram would speak when he saw that she was anxious and
pained; and she took hold of his hand and held him, and when he said
something of mentioning that he had seen her, she cried out with a sort
of terror, "Oh no, no, Mr. Trevor, I beg you will not. Let him think
me dead, as I thought him." And then she drew down Bertram's tall head
to her, and fairly kissed his forehead, adding, "I could not help it,
sir; an old woman's kiss will do you no harm!"

Then he went away. He never did tell us of the meeting till long
after. He was not a great letter writer, and, besides, he thought my
father might not wish to have the flirtations of his youth brought up
against him. So we little knew!

But it seems that the daughter and son-in-law were just as much amazed
as Bertram, and when he was gone, and the poor old lady sank into her
chair and burst out crying, and as they came and asked who or what this
was, she sobbed out, "Your brother Hester! Oh! so like him--my
husband!" or something to that effect, as unawares. She wanted to take
it back again, but of course Hester would not let her, and made her
tell the whole.

It seems that her name was Faith Le Blanc; she was half English, half
French-Canadian, and lived in a village in a very unsettled part, where
Captain Trevor used to come to hunt, and where he made love to her, and
ended by marrying her--with the knowledge of her family and his brother
officers, but not of his family--just before he was ordered to the Lake
frontier. The war had stirred up the Indians to acts of violence they
had not committed for many years, and a tribe of them came down on the
village, plundering, burning, killing, and torturing those whom they
had known in friendly intercourse.

Faith Le Blanc had once given some milk to a papoose upon its mother's
back, and perhaps for this reason she was spared, but everyone
belonging to her was, she believed, destroyed, and she was carried away
by the tribe, who wanted to make her one of themselves; and she knew
that if she offended them, such horrors as she had