“When I recovered from the long, nervous fever into which that great trial had thrown me—to please my parents I re-entered society, and was followed, flattered, courted as before; but nothing would dissipate the gloom of my soul. At last, while in Berkely square, at my father’s breakfast table, I heard him read from the Daily Times, among other items of news, the account of the wreck of the French ship ‘_Le Duc D’Anjou_,’ on her passage from Algiers. Now the slightest circumstance relating to that Province had for me a terrible interest, and I listened as I should never have done had not the ship sailed from that coast. The last name on the list of the lost was that of Victoire L’Orient!” “Great Heaven!” “God forgive me! I thought not of the horrors of the shipwreck, the sufferings of the crew, or even of the loss of the poor men drowned with Victoire. I only felt my evil genius gone, the gloom and terror lifted from my life, and I swooned with the shock of a great deliverance!” “I do not wonder, good Heaven!” “When the reaction came, I knew how wrong had been this feeling; and to atone for it, and to pay respect to _death_, if not to the _dead_, I withdrew from society and retired to this place, where I remained in seclusion eighteen months, just as I should have done in mourning the decease of a near and honored relative. I brought down that copy of the Times, containing the account of the shipwreck, and have preserved it—here it is,” she said, lifting an old paper from a table near her. “Look at it—there is a note in parenthesis following the name of Victoire L’Orient—I mention it only as a providential confirmation of the identity of the man.” Lord Montressor opened the paper, looked down the column until he came to the list of the lost, and to the last name—Victoire L’Orient, with the following annotation. “This man, it may be remembered, was some years since convicted of a complicity in the treason of De Vil, attended with circumstances of a memorable character, and was sentenced to be transported for life to the convict colony of Algiers. He had lately received his pardon, and was on his way to France.” “Why have you preserved this, Stella?” inquired Lord Montressor, when he had finished reading.