“No, no! my dear!” said Mrs. Sutton, earnestly.  “I am shocked and astonished that you should ever have labored under such a delusion.  Frederic told me the story, and a dreadful one it was, the day old Mrs. Tazewell was buried.  Wasn’t it wonderful that he never knew whom Winston had married until he saw her leaning upon his arm in the graveyard?  He recognized Mr. Dorrance in the house, but supposed him to be a visitor at Ridgeley and a relative of Mrs. Aylett, having heard that her maiden name was Dorrance.  As to his being your husband, it did not at first occur to him, so bewildered was he by your meeting and the thoughts awakened by it.  But at sight of her the truth rushed over him, nearly depriving him of his wits.  He soon got out of me all that I knew, and by putting this and that together, we made out the mystery.  I was so grieved and indignant and horrified that I was for sending him forthwith to Winston, that he might clear himself of the shocking charges they had preferred against him, by exposing the motives of his accusers.  But he was stubborn and independent.  ‘It can do no good now,’ he said.  ’Fifteen years ago this discovery would have been my temporal salvation.  And Dorrance is Mabel’s husband.  I cannot touch him without wounding her.’  I could not reconcile this mode of reasoning with my conscience.  If wrong had been done, it ought to be righted.  I did not sleep a wink all night.  I wept over my noble, generous, slandered boy, and over you, my darling! but my chief thought was anger at the shameless depravity, the cold-blooded cruelty of the brazen-faced adventuress who sat in your angel mother’s place.  For aught Frederic or I knew, her real husband was still alive.  He had never heard of the divorce, you see, and the circumstance of her marrying Winston under her maiden name looked black.

“Well!  I pondered upon the horrible affair until I could hold my peace no longer.  Frederic and Florence went home with Mary Trent next morning, and knowing that Winston must pass the upper gate on his way to court, I put on my bonnet soon after breakfast, and strolled in that direction.  By and by he rode up, stopped his horse, and began to talk so sociably that before I quite knew what I was doing, I was in the middle of my story.  I wonder now how I did it, but I was excited, and he listened so patiently, questioned so quietly, that I did not realize, for several hours afterward, what a blaze I must have kindled in his heart and home, whether he believed me or not.  The next thing I heard was not, as I expected, that he and his wife had quarrelled, or that he was going to challenge Frederic for having belied him, but that poor Dorrance was very ill with some affection of the brain.  It was not until a year later—­just after his death—­that people began to talk about the strange carryings-on at Ridgeley; how Mr. and Mrs. Aylett occupied separate apartments, and never sat, or walked, or rode together,