“Calm yourself, daughter, and listen to me.  I have kept nothing from you a day longer than necessary.  The facts that exonerate the Duke of Hereward came to me last of all.  Hear me.  From Father Garbennetti, the new cure of San Vito, I learned the truth of that miscalled elopement of the late Duchess of Hereward.  I learned that—­in the words of your own charming poet—­

’My rival fair
A saint in heaven should be.’

For a most innocent and most deeply wronged and long-suffering martyr on earth she had been.  From him I also learned the existence of her boy, and the adoption of the boy, after the mother’s death, by the Duke of Hereward.  That was all I could learn from the Italian priest, who had lost sight of the lad after the mother’s death.  Next I pushed inquiries through our agents in England, and through the investigations of Father Fairfield, the eloquent English oratorian, I learned the truth of John Scott’s life in England and Scotland, as I have given it to you.  I received Father Fairfield’s letter only this day; only this day I have learned, Salome, that you are really the Duchess of Hereward; that the Duke of Hereward was, and is, really your husband, and was never the husband of any other woman.”

“Oh, how bitterly! how bitterly! how unpardonably I have wronged him!  He will pardon me!  Yes, he will! for he is all magnanimity, and he loves me!  But I can never, never pardon myself!” exclaimed the young wife, her first joy at discovering the absolute integrity of her husband now giving place to the severest self-condemnation.

“You need not reproach yourself so cruelly, so sternly, under circumstances in which you would not reproach another at all.  Remember what you told me, you had the evidence of your own eyes and ears, and the testimony of documents, and of individuals against him!” said the abbess, soothingly.

“Yes! the evidence of my own eyes and ears, which mistook the counterfeit for the real! the testimony of documents that were forgeries, and of individuals that were false!  And upon these I believed my noble husband guilty of a felony, and without even giving him an opportunity to explain the circumstances, or to defend himself, I left him even on our wedding-day! and have concealed myself from him for many months! exposing him to misconstruction, to dishonor and reproach.  Oh, no!  I can never, never pardon myself!  Nor do I even know how he can ever pardon me.  But he will!  I am sure he will!  Even as the Lord pardons all repented sin, however grievous, so will my peerless husband pardon me!” fervently exclaimed Salome.

The abbess reverted to her own troubles.

“I cannot understand,” she said, “the mystery of that man’s appearance here this morning.”

“What man?” inquired Salome, who was so absorbed in thinking of her husband that she had nearly forgotten the existence of other men.

“‘What man?’ Why, daughter, the Count Waldemar de Volaski—­the man who came here with the woman this morning—­the man whom you mistook for your own husband, the Duke of Hereward, but whom I knew to be Waldemar de Volaski, once my betrothed, who was said to have been killed in a duel, shot through the heart, a quarter of a century ago!” answered the lady, emphatically.