“That poor young woman, known to us as Madam Marguerite Nouvellini, who died in my arms in Washington a few days ago, was the abandoned wife of William Hanson, who had married her under a false name when he was but a youth and she little more than a child. She never knew his real name. A few months after their marriage he left her in Paris, and went, under pretence of business, to California, from where he wrote piteous letters from a pretended bed of sickness—letters which grew shorter and more piteous—until at length they prepared her to receive a black-bordered and black-sealed letter from his invented physician announcing his death from the fever. To the hour of her death she never knew her decamped husband was still living.” “Roma, my dear child, are you quite sure of what you are telling us? For the story shows the man to be a greater sinner, if possible, than we have yet believed him,” said Parson Shaw. “Quite sure, my dear doctor. I have indubitable proof of the fact.” “Did you know all this when you first took the poor young woman under your protection?” inquired Mr. Merritt. “No, not then, but in a very few weeks afterward. She was a very simple, childlike creature. She put me in possession of her short life’s story. She showed me the picture of her husband—Guilliaume Nouvellini she called him—who met her at a Parisian theater, and married her there. I recognized the picture as that of William Hanson. His sister, Rebecca Bushe, has the counterpart of it. She showed me also some of the letters and verses he had written to her, in which she took the greatest pride, poor soul! I recognized his peculiar, well-known handwriting. I was, therefore, absolutely certain that the dead Guilliaume Nouvellini, the husband for whom she had been mourning for nearly five years, and the living William Hanson, who had tried to marry me, were one and the same man.” “You did not tell her this?” “Of course not. Of what use could the information have been to her, poor soul? Why should I have disturbed the last days of a dying wife by such a tale? No, she never knew it.” “Are you sure that there was a lawful marriage?” inquired Parson Shaw. “She showed me the documentary proofs both of her marriage and of the birth and baptism of her child, which she carefully preserved, because, she said, she was the granddaughter and heiress of Mrs. Arbuthnot, of Arbuthnot, in the Highlands of Scotland, whom, however, she had never once seen, for the reason that the stern old lady, who was of ancient family, and of the Church of Scotland, and prejudiced both by birth and by creed against the stage, had discarded her only child, Marguerite’s mother, for marrying an actor. Marguerite, however, cherished hopes that, now the old lady was nearly eighty, she might, before death, relent toward her descendants and seek them out.” “I should think it highly probable she would,” said Lawyer Merritt.