“It’s false!” raved the dowager.

“I arranged it, ma’am,” interposed Mr. Carr.  “Lord Hartledon and your daughter confided the management to me, and the ceremony was performed in secrecy in London”

The dowager looked from one to the other, as if she were bewildered.

“Married her again! why, that was making bad worse.  Two false marriages!  Did you do it to impose upon her?”

“I see you do not understand,” said Lord Hartledon.  “The—­my—­the person in Scotland was dead then.  She was dead, I am thankful to say, before Maude knew anything of the affair.”

Up started the dowager.  “Then is the woman dead now? was she dead when you married her?” laying her hand upon Lady Hartledon’s arm.  “Are her children different from Maude’s?”

“They are.  It could not be otherwise.”

“Her boy is really Lord Elster?”

She flung Lady Hartledon’s arm from her.  Her voice rose to a shriek.

“Maude is not Lady Maude?”

Val shook his head sadly.

“And your children are lords and ladies and honourables,” darting a look of consternation at Anne, “whilst my daughter’s—­”

“Peace, Lady Kirton!” sternly interrupted Val.  “Let the child, Maude, be Lady Maude still to the world; let your daughter’s memory be held sacred.  The facts need never come out:  I do not fear now that they ever will.  I and my wife and Thomas Carr, will guard the secret safely:  take you care to do so.”

“I wish you had been hung before you married Maude!” responded the aggrieved dowager.

“I wish I had,” said he.

“Ugh!” she grunted wrathfully, the ready assent not pleasing her.

“With my poor boy’s death the chief difficulty has passed away.  How things would have turned out, or what would have been done, had he lived, it has well-nigh worn away my brain to dwell upon.  Carr knows that it has nearly killed me:  my wife knows it.”

“Yes, you could tell her things, and keep the diabolical secret from poor Maude and from me,” she returned, rather inconsistently.  “I don’t doubt you and your wife have exulted enough over it.”

“I never knew it until to-night,” said Anne, gently turning to the dowager.  “It has grieved me deeply.  I shall never cease to feel for your daughter’s wrongs; and it will only make me more tender and loving to her child.  The world will never know that she is not Lady Maude.”

“And the other name—­Elster—­because you know she has no right to it,” was the spiteful retort.  “I wish to my heart you had been drowned in your brother’s place, Lord Hartledon; I wished it at the time.”

“I know you did.”

“You could not then have made fools of me and my dear daughter; and the darling little cherub in the churchyard would have been the real heir.  There’d have been a good riddance of you.”