elieve
she is no better than ...; and that I believe there is not a virtuous
woman in the world."

At the very time--so inconsistent was this singular woman--that Lord
Crawford, at her request, was breaking the news of her marriage to her
brother, she was repudiating it indignantly to every person she met. To
Lady Wigton, she declared with tears that it was an "infamous story
raised by Miss Molly Kerr, her cousin, in order to prejudice her brother
against her, and that it had been so effectual that he had stopped her
pension"; and she begged Lady Wigton "when she went to England to
contradict it."

But this nomadic, hand-to-mouth life could not go on indefinitely. The
supply of dupes began to show signs of failing, and in her extremity she
wrote urgent letters to friends in England and Scotland for supplies;
she even borrowed from a poor Scottish minister almost the last penny he
had. A crisis was rapidly approaching which there was no way of
escaping--_unless_ the birth of a child might soften her brother's
heart, and, perchance, re-open the vista of a great inheritance in the
years to come. Such speculations must have occurred to Lady Jean at this
critical stage of her fortunes; but whether what quickly followed was a
coincidence, or, as so many asserted, a fraudulent plot to give effect
to her ambition, it would need a much cleverer and more confident man
than I to say. At any rate, from this failure of her purse and of her
hopes of propitiating the Duke began all those mysterious suggestions
and circumstances, of which so much was made in the trial of future
years, and which heralded the birth of the desired heir--or "to make
assurance doubly sure," in Lady Jean's case--heirs.

As the expected event drew near it became important to go to Paris in
order to have the advantage of the best medical assistance, especially
since Lady Jean was assured that the doctors of Rheims, where she was
then living, were "as ignorant as brutes." And so to the French capital
she journeyed with her retinue, through three sultry July days, in a
public diligence devoid of springs. How trying such a journey must have
been to a lady in her condition is evidenced by the fact that, during
the three days, she spent forty-one hours on the road, reaching Paris on
the 4th of July. Just six days later her ladyship, to quote a letter
written by Mrs Hewit, "produced two lovely boys," one of whom was so
weak and puny that the doctor "begged it mig