"I have," she continued, "lived for the world, and found it a glorious one. The husband of my heart, and the husband of ceremony, have long both been dead. I enjoy a competency--nay, much more--and yet, they talk to me of dying. To-morrow will decide upon my fate. I have lived a good life, according to my capabilities--it is no delusion--but, should the sentence of to-morrow's consultation be fatal, then the lawyer and the clergyman--" "And why not to-day?" "Because it is ours, Ralph, or rather, yours. Well, your mother was of good, though not of exalted, family--the daughter of a considerable freeholder in our neighbourhood. She was the eldest of many children, and the most beautiful born of all in the county. Her father sent her to London; and she became thus, for her station and the period, over educated. She foolishly preferred the fashionable, and refined, and luxurious service in a nobleman's family to a noble independence in her honest father's spacious house. It was her mistake and her ruin. "Ralph! I loved your mother--you know it--but as a governess in the Duke of E's family, I hated and feared her. I don't think that she was more beautiful than I, but he--he whom I will never mention--began to be of that opinion--at least, I trembled. Reginald Rathelin loved her-- wooed her; I entered with eagerness into his schemes--his success was my security. Miss Daventry at first repulsed me; but, at length, I overcame her repugnance--many ladies, notwithstanding my ambiguous position, awed by the rank of my protector, received me--we became friends. The beautiful governess eloped--I managed everything--they were married. I was myself a witness of the ceremony." "Thank God!" I exclaimed, fervently. "Reginald was wild and dissipated, poor and unprincipled--he cajoled his wife, and suffered her again to return to her menial station in the duke's family. In due time there was another journey necessary. It was when you were born at Reading. `A little while, and yet a little while,' was the constant plea of the now solicited husband, `and I will own you, my dear Elizabeth, and boast of you before all the world.'" "My poor mother!" "About two years after this marriage, Sir Luke, the father of Reginald, fell ill, and the neglect of the husband became only something a little short of actual desertion. Your mother had a proud as well as a loving spirit. She wrote to the father of Reginald--she interested the duke in her favour--she was now as anxious for publicity as concealment; but the expectant heir defied us all. He confessed himself a villain, and avowed that he had entrapped your mother by a fictitious marriage." "And _he_ my father!--but you, _you, her friend_?"