led my son as well as myself to take
the Armadale name, or lose the succession to the Armadale property.
But, even in those days, the rumor of a contemplated emancipation of
the slaves--the emancipation which is now close at hand--was spreading
widely in the colony. No man could tell how the value of West Indian
property might be affected if that threatened change ever took place.
No man could tell--if I gave you back my own paternal name, and left you
without other provision in the future than my own paternal estate--how
you might one day miss the broad Armadale acres, or to what future
penury I might be blindly condemning your mother and yourself. Mark how
the fatalities gathered one on the other! Mark how your Christian name
came to you, how your surname held to you, in spite of me!

"My health had improved in my old home--but it was for a time only. I
sank again, and the doctors ordered me to Europe. Avoiding England (why,
you may guess), I took my passage, with you and your mother, for France.
From France we passed into Italy. We lived here; we lived there. It was
useless. Death had got met and Death followed me, go where I might. I
bore it, for I had an alleviation to turn to which I had not deserved.
You may shrink in horror from the very memory of me now. In those days,
you comforted me. The only warmth I still felt at my heart was the
warmth you brought to it. My last glimpses of happiness in this world
were the glimpses given me by my infant son.

"We removed from Italy, and went next to Lausanne--the place from which
I am now writing to you. The post of this morning has brought me news,
later and fuller than any I had received thus far, of the widow of the
murdered man. The letter lies before me while I write. It comes from a
friend of my early days, who has seen her, and spoken to her--who has
been the first to inform her that the report of my death in Madeira was
false. He writes, at a loss to account for the violent agitation which
she showed on hearing that I was still alive, that I was married, and
that I had an infant son. He asks me if I can explain it. He speaks in
terms of sympathy for her--a young and beautiful woman, buried in the
retirement of a fishing-village on the Devonshire coast; her father
dead; her family estranged from her, in merciless disapproval of her
marriage. He writes words which might have cut me to the heart, but for
a closing passage in his letter, which seized my whole attentio