“Hush, dear, I am but an honest and well-meaning man. At least I hope I am that much. As soon as we heard of the earl’s death I sent for the child, whom he had cared for while he lived. The boy was brought over in a Baltimore clipper and I went to the city to meet him. I found the boy thriving, and I sent him down to Port Tobacco by sea while I came home by land. I intended that he should be reared in Port Tobacco, where I could go to see him often and watch over his training. It was a stormy season, and I, traveling by the shorter land route, reached home fully a week before the tempest-tossed and battered _Carrier Pigeon_ was driven upon our shores and wrecked with the loss of all on board, except the child alone, who was strangely saved. I should have taken him at once to our own home but for consideration of you. I gave him in charge of Miss Bayard. In a day or two I knew that you had seen and recognized the boy. Then I noticed that any mention of the wrecked child distressed you. So I did all that I could for the little lad without forcing him upon your notice.” “My noble Abel! I have never deserved such a heart!” “No more of that, love. I think now that I have made ‘a clean breast of it.’ I think I have told you all.” “Except this: You said that my first marriage was not a fraud, but a legal act. Oh! is that true? And if true, how came you to know it?” inquired the lady. “Oh, yes, I must explain that. And then, Elfrida, you must neither talk nor listen longer. You are exhausted.” “But tell me, first, how do you know my first marriage was legal?” “Do you remember the discovery we made the day before you were taken ill?—the discovery that the villain who attempted to blackmail you and marry our heiress, under the name of Angus Anglesea, was not that gallant officer at all, but an impostor, taking advantage of the closest possible resemblance to Anglesea to carry out his own nefarious purposes?” “Yes; a relative of Anglesea—Byrne Stukely.” “The same. Well, twenty years ago Anglesea and Stukely—I hate to connect their names—were exact counterparts, as you have heard. Well, this same Stukely was in Paris at the time that Saviola was there, and was taking the name and character of his benefactor. Saviola, deceived by the name and resemblance, mistook him for Anglesea, and asked him to act as his second. Stukely consented, and when Saviola fell, mortally wounded, the dying man intrusted the impostor with important papers and confidential messages, to be delivered to you at Geneva. Now do you understand?” “Yes, I see. But he took his time in coming to Geneva; did not make his appearance there, indeed, until weeks after Saviola’s death, when he came, I suppose, in the course of his own business.”