"I went abroad immediately," replied Beauchamp, "for my father exacted from me a solemn promise, never to live with or to see if it could be avoided, the woman who had thus become my wife. He used strong and bitter, but just terms in speaking of her. 'He could not survive the thought,' he said, 'that the children of a prostitute should succeed to the title of a family without stain.' My promise was given willingly, for I will confess that hate and indignation and disgust rendered her very idea odious to me. My father remained in England for some months, promising to make such arrangements regarding money--the base object of the whole conspiracy--that I should never be troubled any more. He added tenderly, and sadly, though gravely and firmly, that farther he could do nothing; for that I must bear the consequences of one great error in a solitary and companionless life. In consideration of a promise on the woman's part never to molest me, nor to take my name, he settled upon her the sum of a thousand per annum. During my father's life I heard no more of her; but when he himself joined me in Italy, I could see but too plainly how grief and bitter disappointment had undermined a constitution already shaken. He did not long survive, and all that I have myself undergone has been little, compared with the thought, that the consequences of my own folly served to shorten the days of my kind good parent." "But what became of the woman?" demanded Dr. Miles. "You surely have had tidings of her since."