“That is very easily explained,” the young wife answered. “They were excessively alarmed after I ran away from them, for of course they realized that upon me depended the hope of their ultimately coming into the possession of the income of the fifty thousand dollars mentioned in my father’s will. All this, you understand, I learned from them during my illness at the chateau. They believed me to be dead—they had seen a notice in a London paper, shortly after my disappearance, of the death of a girl bearing my name and answering to my description, a friendless girl, who had met with an accident, and been carried to the Home for the Friendless—and Mrs. Rochester conceived the plan of representing Sarah as the Rochester heiress, marrying her to the Hamilton heir, and thus securing, a fine position and great wealth for her daughter, besides the handsome income referred to in my father’s will for herself. Sarah was very readily changed to Sadie, and to inquisitive people, who had known that there were two Miss Rochesters, it was easy to say that she had lost her own daughter, and her only companion was now her husband’s child. We had been abroad for years, consequently had grown out of the remembrance of our old acquaintances, and no one would be the wiser for the deception. It was a very cunning plot and very cleverly developed, as you know, while if they had failed in making you their victim, they would still have had the fifty thousand dollars, provided I never made my appearance to claim it. The first intimation they had that I was not the girl who had died in London, was upon being told whom you had married by Madame Winthrop, but they thought they were safe again upon hearing that I had lost my life in that fire, and they believed that if they could secure you they would never have anything to fear hereafter. You can perhaps imagine their astonishment and dismay when, upon removing my cap and spectacles, after I had fainted before their door, in the chateau, they discovered who I was. Of course they recognized me instantly, and when they found I was too ill to be removed, they planned to conceal me in Sarah’s room until I should be well enough to be secretly sent away. Even then, I did not know that you were the heir of my father’s friend. Your mother and sister had represented to me that you had been pledged to some one else at the time of our marriage, but they did not tell me to whom, and I had no idea that you were in any way concerned until Sarah Rochester herself told me, on the day that she discovered my identity. It seemed as if the knowledge must kill me—as if everything in my life had gone at cross purposes. I was already the wife of the man whom my father had willed I should marry—the man whom I had fled from because I feared he would be odious to me, but whom fate had decreed that I should love with my whole soul. It seemed to me then as if I had recklessly thrown my life and my happiness away, for if I had