s I saw his eyes sparkle, and the color
mount in his fine rugged face!

This is the substance of what I heard from him. I tell it briefly,
because it is still painful to me to tell it at all.

My uncle had met Lady Claudia at her father's country house. She had
then reappeared in society, after a period of seclusion, passed partly
in England, partly on the Continent. Before the date of her retirement,
she had been engaged to marry a French nobleman, equally illustrious by
his birth and by his diplomatic services in the East. Within a few weeks
of the wedding-day, he was drowned by the wreck of his yacht. This was
the calamity to which my uncle had referred.

Lady Claudia's mind was so seriously affected by the dreadful event,
that the doctors refused to answer for the consequences, unless she was
at once placed in the strictest retirement. Her mother, and a French
maid devotedly attached to her, were the only persons whom it was
considered safe for the young lady to see, until time and care had in
some degree composed her. Her return to her friends and admirers, after
the necessary interval of seclusion, was naturally a subject of sincere
rejoicing among the guests assembled in her father's house. My uncle's
interest in Lady Claudia soon developed into love. They were equals
in rank, and well suited to each other in age. The parents raised no
obstacles; but they did not conceal from their guest that the disaster
which had befallen their daughter was but too likely to disincline her
to receive his addresses, or any man's addresses, favorably. To their
surprise, they proved to be wrong. The young lady was touched by the
simplicity and the delicacy with which her lover urged his suit. She
had lived among worldly people. This was a man whose devotion she could
believe to be sincere. They were married.

Had no unusual circumstances occurred? Had nothing happened which the
General had forgotten? Nothing.

X.

IT is surely needless that I should stop here, to draw the plain
inferences from the events just related.

Any person who remembers that the shawl in which the infant was wrapped
came from those Eastern regions which were associated with the French
nobleman's diplomatic services--also, that the faults of composition
in the letter found on the child were exactly the faults likely to have
been committed by the French maid--any person who follows these traces
can find his way to the truth as I found mine.

Retur