“Oh! the intolerable anguish of the days that followed!  But for my baby boy, I think I should have died, or maddened!

“In my worst paroxysms, good Madelena would come and take up my baby and lay him on my bosom, and whisper, that no doubt, though his handsome young father had gone to Heaven, it was all for the best; and we too, if we were good, would one day meet him there, or words to that effect.

“Surely angels are with children, and their presence makes itself felt in the comfort children bring to wounded hearts.

“One day, in a state bordering on idiocy, I think, I examined and compared dates, in the sickening hope that my darling boy might have been born before the decree of divorce had been pronounced, and thus be the heir of his father’s dukedom, notwithstanding all that followed.

“But, ah! that faint hope also was destined to die!  The dates, compared, stood thus: 

“The decree of divorce was pronounced February 13th, 18—.

“The marriage between yourself and Lady Augusta McDugald was solemnized April 1st, 18—.

“My boy was born April 15th, 18—.

“Yes, you divorced the guiltless mother two months, and married another woman two weeks, before the birth of your innocent boy.

“You cruelly and unjustly disowned, disinherited, and even delegalized, and degraded your son before he was born!  So that your son was not born in wedlock, could not bear your name, or inherit your title!  And this misfortune came upon him by no fault of his, or of his most unhappy mother’s but by the jealousy, vengeance, and fatal rashness of his father!  And now there was no help, either in law or equity, for the dishonored boy.

“This, Duke of Hereward, is the ruin you have wrought in his life, in mine, and in yours.

“Do you wonder that when I realized it all I fell into a state of despair deeper than any I had ever yet known?—­a despair that was characterized by all who saw it as melancholy madness.

“My dear boy, who was at first such a comfort to me, was now only a beloved sorrow!  When I held him to my bosom, I thought of nothing but his bitter, irreparable wrongs.

“I do not know how long I had continued to live in this despairing and heathenish condition, when one day, in harvest time, Madelena brought good Father Antonio to see me.  This Father Antonio was the priest of the chapel of Santa Maria, who had performed the marriage ceremony between Waldemar de Volaski and myself.

“The father also naturally supposed that all my grief was for the death of my child’s father.  He began in a gentle, admonitory way to rebuke me for inordinate affection and sinful repining, and to remind me of the comfort and strength to be found in the spirit of religion and the ordinances of the Church.

“My heart opened to the good old priest as it had never opened to a living man or even woman before.

“Then and there I told him the whole secret history of my life, including every detail of my two unhappy marriages, and the fatal divorce preceding the birth of my son.  I concealed nothing from him.  I told him all, and felt infinitely relieved when I had done so.