I was wayward and young when I left him in anger.
Oh, if I have sinned I have suffered; but I think that I could die
content if I could only see him once more." Annette related the strange
sad story to her physician, who decided that it was safe and desirable
that there should be an interview between them. Luzerne visited his long
lost wife and after a private interview, he called Annette to the room,
who listened sadly while she told her story, which exonerated Luzerne
from all intent to deceive Annette by a false marriage while she had a
legal claim upon him.

"I was born," she said, "in New Orleans. My father was a Spaniard and
my mother a French Creole. She was very beautiful and my father met her
at a French ball and wished her for his companion for life, but as she
was an intelligent girl and a devout Catholic she would not consent to
live a life by which she would be denied the Sacrament of her Church; so
while she could not contract a civil marriage, which would give her the
legal claims of a wife, she could enter into an ecclesiastical marriage
by which she would not forfeit her claim to the rights and privileges of
the Church as a good Catholic. I was her only child, loved and petted by
my father, and almost worshipped by my mother, and I never knew what it
was to have a wish unfilled if it was in her power to gratify it. When I
was about 16 I met Clarence Luzerne. People then said that I was very
beautiful. You would scarcely think so now, but I suppose he thought so,
too. In a short time we were married, and soon saw that we were utterly
unfitted to each other; he was grave and I was gay; he was careful and
industrious, I was careless and extravagant; he loved the quiet of his
home and books; I loved the excitements of pleasure and the ball room,
and yet I think he loved me, but it was as a father might love a wayward
child whom he vainly tried to restrain. I had a cousin who had been
absent from New Orleans a number of years, of whose antecedents I knew
not scarcely anything. He was lively, handsome and dashing. My husband
did not like his society, and objected to my associating with him. I did
not care particularly for him, but I chafed against the restraint, and
in sheer waywardness I continued the association. One day he brought me
a beautiful diamond necklace which he said he had obtained in a distant
land. I laid it aside intending to show it to my husband; in the
meantime, a number of burglaries had be