“I was too lame and helpless to attempt to follow Mona, but I set a detective at work to find my wife, for I still had faith in her, and thought she might be the victim of the landlord’s suspicions.  The detective traced her to London, and brought me word that a couple answering the description of my wife and the butler had crossed the channel on a certain date, and had since been living under the same roof in London.

“Then I cursed my wife, and said I would never trust a human being again.  I was a long time getting over my lameness, but I still kept my detective on the watch, and one day he came to me with the intelligence that the butler had deserted his victim, and the lady was ill, and almost destitute.

“That Mona should want or suffer, under any circumstances, was the last thing I could wish, even though I then firmly believed that she had deserted me; while the thought that my child might even lack the necessities of life, was sufficient incentive to make me hasten at once to her relief.  But I have told you, Mona, that she was dead, and I found only a weak and helpless baby to need my care.  The nurse told me that the lady had wanted to go to America several weeks previously, but her physician had forbidden her to attempt to cross the ocean.  She told me that a gentleman had taken the room for her and had been very kind to her, but the lady had been very unhappy and ill most of the time, since coming to the house.  I questioned her closely, but evidently Mona had made a confidante of no one, and she had lived very quietly, seldom going out, and seeing no one.  I could not reconcile this with the fact of her having eloped with the butler, and I realized all too late that I should have come to her the moment I learned where she was, demanded an explanation, and at least given her a chance to defend herself.  My darling might have lived, if I had done so, and my child would not have been motherless.

“I was frantic with grief, and tried to drown my sorrow by constant change of scene.  I traveled for two years, and then was summoned home to my aunt, who was dying.  She insisted that my marriage with Miss Barton should be immediately consummated, and I, too wretched to contest the point, let them have their way.  Miss Dinsmore died soon afterward, but without suspecting my previous marriage.  Then I confessed the truth to my wife, and told her of the existence of my child.  I saw at once that she was deeply wounded upon learning of this secret of my life, but I never suspected how exceedingly jealous and bitter she was, or that she had any previous knowledge of the fact, until a little more than a year after our marriage, when I accidentally overheard a conversation between her and the man who had been her accomplice in ruining your mother’s happiness and mine.  That elopement, so called, had always seemed utterly inexplicable to me until then.