the emissary of fate she really was.

"Mr. de Peyster has sent some letters, Frank. He writes me that none of
them are of importance, but that you may care to look them over. And
they made me think of a great envelope of papers which I had meant to
send to you before you were taken ill. I found it just after you had
been looking up all those family affairs, before you went abroad! I put
them with my knitting, and naturally forgot. Your father gave it to me,
oh, so many years ago! and I put it in the cedar chest." She gave the
papers to Frank, talking in a gay, unimportant manner as she did so.
"Isn't that curious on the outside?" she demanded. "'_To be opened in
case my will is ever disputed._' Now, who did your father think would
ever dispute his will? I had been a faithful and," she laughed, "more or
less obedient wife for many years. And you were too small to dispute
anything except matters with your tutor. Don't look them over now,
dearest, they may worry you!"

Frank took the envelope with an inexplicable feeling of hope. That his
mother had forgotten important papers did not surprise him in the
least. She had once taken a mortgage held by his father and pasted it
over a place in a chimney where it smoked. She said herself that her
temperament was not one for affairs.

A quick exchange of glances passed between Frank and Katrine as he
excused himself to go to his room for rest, and then, alone at twilight,
he broke the seal upon the confession of that Francis who had preceded
him. To his utter confounding, he discovered in the envelope a
certificate of legal marriage between Francis Ravenel and Patricia
McDermott, duly witnessed and sealed. Wrapped with several letters which
had been exchanged between them was a detailed account of the
unfortunate affair in his father's crooked writing, and inside of all a
bill of divorce, which had been obtained in Illinois previous to the
elder Ravenel's marriage with the beautiful Julie D'Hauteville, of New
Orleans.

As Frank read the history of the boyish folly he felt that little
excusing was needed for his dead father, for the early marriage seemed
but an escapade of a spoiled and self-indulgent boy with a headstrong
and sentimental girl, neither of whom had taken a thought for the
future.

"My wife renounced her faith to marry me [his father wrote]. The
first year of our marriage, which was a legal one only, was one of
great unhappiness, for at heart Pa