Then I broke the seal and read,
while my blood curdled within my veins and every hair pricked at
its roots. The old man knew he was about to die, and confessed to
me in part his manifold transgressions, particularly his inhuman
treatment of his last wife, the mother of little Miggie, but as
this cannot, of course, be interesting to you, I will not repeat
it."
"Oh, do," exclaimed Edith, feeling somehow that anything
concerning the mother of Miggie Bernard would interest her.
"Well, then," returned Arthur, "he did not tell me all the
circumstances of his marriage. I only know that she was a
foreigner and very beautiful--a governess, too, I think in some
German family, and that he married her under an assumed name."
"An assumed name!" Edith cried. "Why was that, pray?"
"I hardly know," returned Arthur, "but believe he became in some
way implicated in a fight or gambling brawl in Paris, and being
threatened with arrest took another name than his own, and fled to
Germany or Switzerland, where he found his wife. They were married
privately, and after two or three years he brought her to his
Florida home, where his proud mother and maiden sister affected to
despise her because of her poverty.
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