dry sob that
shook her frame told how keen was the torture. Regina followed,
kneeling in front of her, burying her face in her mother's dress.

"I saw him enter the carriage and drive away, and thirteen years
passed before I looked upon him again. Of course the reported illness
was a mere ruse to lull his apprehensions. His father received him
with a hurricane of reproaches, threats, maledictions. He taunted,
jeered him with having been hoodwinked, cajoled, outwitted by a
'wily old washwoman,' who had inveigled him into a disgraceful
misalliance in order to betray him, to fasten upon and devour his
wealth. One letter only I received from Cuthbert, denouncing
grandmother's treachery, and announcing his father's rage and threats
to disinherit and disown him if he did not repudiate the marriage,
which he stated was invalid on account of his son's minority. He
wrote that he would be compelled for the present to accede to his
father's wishes, since for nearly two years at least he was wholly
dependent on his bounty; but assured me that on the day when he could
claim his inheritance from his mother he would acknowledge his
marriage at all hazards, and proclaim me his wife. That letter, the
first and last I ever received from my husband, you can read at your
leisure. Three days after it was dated, he and his father sailed for
Europe, and he has never returned to America.

"Although it was a cruel blow to all my brilliant anticipations, I
did not even then dream of the fate designed for me. I loved on,
trusted on, hoped--oh, how sanguinely! My pride was piqued at General
Laurance's haughty, supercilious scorn of my birth and blood, and I
determined to fit myself for the proud niche I would one day fill as
Cuthbert's wife. My grandmother spoke French fluently, it was her
vernacular; and my father had left some valuable and choice books. To
these I turned with avidity, prosecuting my studies with renewed
zest. About three months after my husband left me, Uncle Orme sent
money to defray our expenses to California. Grandmother who foreboded
the future, told me I had been sacrificed, abandoned, repudiated, and
urged me to accompany her. In return, I indignantly refused, charging
her with having fired the temple of my happiness, by the brand of her
betrayal of the secret. Recriminations followed, we parted in anger
and she left me, to join Uncle Orme; but not before acquainting me
with the startling fact that Peleg Peterson ha