hers face their retribution, I wonder, when they disgrace their
innocent little ones, and see shame and horror and aversion in the
soft faces that slept upon their bosoms, and once looked in adoration
at the heaven of their eyes? Even in this life the pangs of the lost
must seize all such.

"I did not marry General Laurance, though I entertained the purpose
of a merely nominal union, and he acceded to my conditions, signing
a marriage contract to adopt you, give you his name, settled upon you
all his remaining fortune, except the real estate which I knew he had
transferred to his son. I think my intense hate and thirst for
vengeance temporarily maddened me; for certainly had I been quite
sane I should never have forced myself to hang upon the verge of such
an odious gulf. I was tempted by the prospect of making you the real
heiress of the Laurance name and wealth, and of beggaring Cuthbert,
his so-called wife and crippled child, by displaying the mortgage I
held; and which will yet sweep them to penury, for the banker has
failed, and Abbie Ames is penniless as Minnie Merle once was.

"While I floated down the dark stream to ruin, a blessed interposing
hand arrested me. Mr. Palma wrote that at last a glorious day of hope
dawned on my weary, starless night. Gerbert Audre was alive and
anxious to testify to the validity of my marriage, and the perfect
sanity and sobriety of Cuthbert when it was solemnized (his father
was prepared to plead that he was insane from intoxication when he
was inveigled into the ceremony); and oh, better, best of all, my
persecutor had relented! Peleg swore that his assertions regarding my
character were untrue, were prompted by malice, stimulated by
Laurance gold. Having been arrested by Mr. Palma and carried before a
magistrate, he had written and signed a noble vindication of me. To
you he avows I owe his tardy recantation and complete justification
of my past; and you will find among those papers his letter to me
upon this subject.

"My daughter, what do we not owe to Erle Palma? God bless
him--now--and for ever! And may the dearest, fondest wishes of his
heart be fulfilled as completely as have been his promises to me."

Regina's face was shrouded by her mother's dress, but thinking of
Mrs. Carew, she sank lower at Mrs. Orme's feet, knowing that her sad
heart could not echo that prayer.

"As yet my identity has not been suspected, but the end is at hand,
and I am about to break the via