one except my mother sharing in the secret. With her
I often talked of Genevra, wishing sometimes that I could hear from her,
a wish which was finally gratified. One day I received a note requesting
an interview at a downtown hotel, the writer signing himself as Thomas
Lambert, and adding that I need have no fears as he came to perform an
act of justice, not of retribution. Three hours later I was locked in a
room with Genevra's father, the same man whom I had seen in Rome.
Detected in forgery years before, he had fled from England and had
hidden himself in Rome, where he accidentally met his daughter, and so
that stain was removed. He had heard of the divorce by a letter which
Genevra managed to send him, and braving all difficulties and dangers he
had come back to England and found his child, hearing from her the story
of her wrongs, and as well as he was able setting himself to discover
the author of the calumny. He was not long in tracing it to Le Roy, whom
he found in a dying condition, and who with his last breath confessed
the falsehood which was imposed upon me, he said, partly from motives of
revenge and partly with a hope that free from me Genevra would at the
last turn to him. As proof that Mr. Lambert told me the truth, he
brought the dying man's confession, written in a cramped, trembling
hand, which I recognized at once. The confession ended with the solemn
assertion: 'For aught I know or believe, Genevra Lambert is as pure and
true as any woman living.'

"I cannot describe the effect this had upon me. I did not love Genevra
then. I had outlived that affection, but I felt remorse and pity for
having wronged her so, and asked how I could make amends.

"'You cannot,' the old man said, 'except in one way, and that she does
not desire. I did not come here with any wish for you to take her for
your wife again. It was an unequal match which never should have been;
but if you believe her innocent, she will be satisfied. She wanted you
to know it, I wanted you to know it, and so I crossed the sea to find
you.'

"I sent a letter by him assuring her she stood acquitted in my mind of
all I had suspected her, and asked her pardon for the great wrong I had
done her. The next I heard of her was in the columns of an English
newspaper, which told me she was dead, while in another place a pencil
mark was lightly turned around a paragraph, which said that 'a forger,
Thomas Lambert, who escaped years ago and was supposed