nd a small embroidery-frame near the fire
showed where she, who was engaged with that task, had lately been
seated. As I bent down in some curiosity to examine a really clever copy
of an altar-piece of Albert Durer, a door gently opened, and I heard the
rustle of a silk dress. I had not got time to look round when, with a
cry, she rushed towards me, and clasped me in her arms. It was Madame
Cleremont!

"My own dear, dear Digby!" she cried, as she kissed me over face and
forehead, smoothing back my hair to look at me, and then falling again
on my neck. "I knew it could be no other when I heard of you, darling;
and when they told me of your singing, I could have sworn it was
yourself."

I tried to disengage myself from her embrace, and summoned what I
could of sternness to repel her caresses. She dropped at my feet, and,
clasping my hands, implored me, in accents broken with passion, to
forgive her. To see her who had once been all that a mother could have
been to me in tenderness and care, who watched the long hours of
the night beside my sick-bed,--to see her there before me, abject,
self-accused, and yet entreating forgiveness, was more than I could
bear. My nerves, besides, had been already too tensely strung; and I
burst into a passion of tears that totally overcame me. She sat with her
arm round me, and wept.

With a wild hysterical rapidity she poured forth a sort of excuse of her
own conduct. She recalled all that I had seen her suffer of insult and
shame; the daily outrages passed upon her; the slights which no woman
can or ought to pardon. She spoke of her friendlessness, her misery;
but, more than all, her consuming desire to be avenged on the man
who had degraded her. "Your father, I knew, was the man to do me this
justice," she cried; "he did not love me, nor did I love him; but we
both hated this wretch, and it seemed little to me what became of me, if
I could but compass his ruin."

I scarcely followed her. I bethought me of my poor mother, for whom none
had a thought, neither of the wrongs done her, nor of the sufferings to
which she was so remorselessly consigned.

"You do not listen to me. You do not hear me," cried she, passionately;
"and yet who has been your friend as I have? Who has implored your
father to be just towards you as I have done? Who has hazarded her whole
future in maintaining your rights,--who but I?" In a wild rhapsody of
mingled passion and appeal she went on to show how Sir Rog