“I did not think that you would disbelieve my statement, publish my flight, and blast my reputation by a divorce.

“I was never false to you in thought, word or deed.

“Volaski was not my lover; he was my sternest mentor.  He came to the house during your absence; not for the pleasure of seeing me, for he took no pleasure in my society; he came to arrange with me the programme of my departure; an angel of purity or a demon of malice might have been present at our interviews, and seen nothing to grieve the first or please the last.

“I was ill and nervous and fearful; I could not travel alone, and therefore Volaski went with me, and took care of me; but it was the care a pitiless gend’arme would have taken of a convicted criminal.  It was a care that only hurried me to my destination, my chosen place of exile—­San Vito—­and which left me on the day of my arrival there.  I have never seen him since.  And now let me say and swear on the Christian faith and hope of a dying woman—­that—­from the moment I met Count Waldemar de Volaski at the British embassy, to the moment I parted with him at San Vito, he never once came so near me as even to kiss my hand—­a courtesy that any gentleman might have shown without blame.  You may not believe me now; that you did not believe me before was your great misfortune, and mine, and our son’s.

“A week after Volaski had left me you followed us and traced us to San Vito.  I heard of your visit and trembled; for, though really guiltless, I felt that to meet your eye would seem worse than death.  Fortunately for us both, perhaps, you declined to see me and went away.

“The next news that I heard was of the duel in which you had killed Volaski.  I should scarcely have believed in his death this time, had not a packet been forwarded to me, through his second.  This packet contained a letter that he had written to me on the eve of the duel, and with a presentiment of death overshadowing him.  In this letter he said that in death he claimed me again as his wife, and bequeathed to me, as to his widow, all that he had the power to leave, his personal property, and he took a last solemn farewell of me.

“In the packet, besides, was his will and other documents necessary to put me in possession of his bequest, and also a great number of valuable jewels.

“These, together with my own small dower, have made me independent for life.

“It will show how perfectly palsied was my heart when I tell you that I could not feel either horror of crime, grief for Volaski’s death, or gratitude for his bequest.

“I could feel nothing.

“Days and weeks passed in this apathy of despair, from which I was at length painfully aroused by a most shocking discovery.

“Madelena, my hostess, who tenderly watched over my health had her suspicions aroused, and put some motherly questions to me, and when I had answered them she startled me with the announcement that in a very few months I should become a mother.