m; but that she
was not his wife, and that the child which she bore could not be the
heir to his title, and could claim no heirship to his property. He
did love her,--having found her to be a woman of whose company he had
not tired in six months. He was going back to Italy, and he offered
to take her with him,--but he could not, he said, permit the farce of
her remaining at Lovel Grange and calling herself the Countess Lovel.
If she chose to go with him to Palermo, where he had a castle, and to
remain with him in his yacht, she might for the present travel under
the name of his wife. But she must know that she was not his wife.
She was only his mistress.

Of course she told her father. Of course she invoked every Murray
in and out of Scotland. Of course there were many threats. A duel
was fought up near London, in which Lord Lovel consented to be shot
at twice,--declaring that after that he did not think that the
circumstances of the case required that he should be shot at any
more. In the midst of this a daughter was born to her and her father
died,--during which time she was still allowed to live at Lovel
Grange. But what was it expedient that she should do? He declared
that he had a former wife when he married her, and that therefore she
was not and could not be his wife. Should she institute a prosecution
against him for bigamy, thereby acknowledging that she was herself
no wife and that her child was illegitimate? From such evidence as
she could get, she believed that the Italian woman whom the Earl in
former years had married had died before her own marriage. The Earl
declared that the Countess, the real Countess, had not paid her debt
to nature, till some months after the little ceremony which had taken
place in Applethwaite Church. In a moment of weakness Josephine fell
at his feet and asked him to renew the ceremony. He stooped over her,
kissed her, and smiled. "My pretty child," he said, "why should I do
that?" He never kissed her again.

What should she do? Before she had decided, he was in his yacht
sailing to Palermo;--sailing no doubt not alone. What should she do?
He had left her an income,--sufficient for the cast-off mistress
of an Earl,--some few hundreds a year, on condition that she would
quietly leave Lovel Grange, cease to call herself a Countess, and
take herself and her bairn,--whither she would. Every abode of sin
in London was open to her for what he cared. But what should she
do? It seemed