"It was night; and, after having supped, I went along the passage towards my bed-room, when, as I passed a door that was open, I heard a voice that almost made me sink into the earth. It was that of the Lady Eugenie; and, as I passed by the door, I looked in without wishing to look, and I saw her there, sitting speaking to a servant, pale and worn, but scarcely less beautiful than ever. I was fool enough to faint; and when I revived, I found myself in her chamber, with herself and her woman bending over me. At first I thought she did not know me, so terribly was I changed, and so little did she seem moved by the sight of one who had injured her; but when I was quite well, and thanked her in the English tongue, and was about to leave her, she said. 'No; stay a moment. Leave us, Marguerite;' and I trembled so that I could not move. The girl went away: and then she said, 'You are terribly altered, Bertha; but I have kept you to say, that if sorrow for anything you ever did against me be the cause of that sad change, console yourself. I have long ago forgiven you. Nay, more; I have often thought I did you some injustice.'" "Then you positively saw the same lady with your own eyes," said Mr. Evelyn, "whom you had seen united to the late Earl before the death of Cromwell, ten years after he had married another person?" "I did," replied Bertha. "But it is useless now to detail all that passed between us. I found that her brother had compelled her to assume another name, and to spread a report of her own death. That after her return to France she had borne a son; this gentleman present, the true Earl of Danemore--" "You mistake," said Langford; "I was born in England, in the very town where my father's marriage was celebrated with my mother; for she was resolved, she has often told me, that I should lose none of the privileges of an Englishman by being born in a foreign country, and she crossed the seas to England a month before my birth, in order that her child might first see light in the native land of his father. I have the certificate of my birth duly attested."