“I am not joking; I have simply made a truthful statement that Miss Rochester is already my wife. She is here in this house; I have but just introduced her to Mrs. Tillinghast,” Dr. Winthrop affirmed, with a positiveness which alarmed his mother. “My son, there is some mystery about this, and I beg that you will explain yourself. When were you married?” “Two years ago next month.” “What do you mean?” cried madam, in despair, and beginning to fear that the hard study of the last two months had turned his brain. “Mother, listen!” the young man commanded. “Sadie Rochester and Sarah Rochester are two different persons. Sadie Rochester ran away from her step-mother because she ill-treated her. She fled to Boston, where she applied for a situation as nurse in the City Hospital. Then a little later she gave up some—too much—of her life-blood to save the life of your son, who afterward fell in love with her and married her. Mother, Salome Howland Rochester was the true Sadie Rochester, and the girl who has tried to palm herself off upon me as such is a contemptible impostor.” Madame Winthrop had begun to comprehend the truth soon after her son had commenced to explain, and her face grew deathly white, her eyes almost wild with fear and mortification, as he proceeded to announce his startling facts. “I—I cannot believe it,” she gasped, when he paused as above; “and besides—Salome is dead.” “Salome is not dead; she saved herself from that fire,” Dr. Winthrop replied. “But learning afterward, that she was supposed to have been one of the victims, she let it be so understood, since she wished to be dead to her enemies and the husband, who, she had been led to believe, had disowned her.” Madam’s proud head began to droop here, but her son went on: “She became companion to a lady named Leonard; she won her heart by her goodness and loveliness. They came abroad after a time, were in Paris at the time the cholera broke out; Miss Leonard was attacked with it and died in the convent of the gray nuns, after having bequeathed her handsome fortune to Salome. My darling then adopted the dress of the gray nuns and resumed her old vocation of nursing. She was the means of doing an inestimable amount of good; she saved many lives. Mother, she was known as Sister Angela!” “True! O True!” and the tone was full of agony and humiliation. “It cannot—cannot be!”