as a husband?"

"That idea did not strike me until you asked me if she had a child.
Should your conjecture be correct, it would obviously increase her
repugnance to apply for the annulment of her illegal marriage. But if
Louise is still living and comes across me, I do not doubt that, the
motives for concealment no longer operating, she will confide to me the
truth. Since we have been talking together thus frankly, I suppose I may
fairly ask whether I do not guess correctly in supposing that this _soi-
disant_ husband, whose name I forget,--Mac--something, perhaps, Scotch-I
think she said he was _Ecossais_,--is dead and has left by will some
legacy to Louise and any child she may have borne to him?"

"Not exactly so. The man, as you say, is dead; but he bequeathed no
legacy to the lady who did not hold herself married to him. But there
are those connected with him who, knowing the history, think that some
compensation is due for the wrong so unconsciously done to her, and yet
more to any issue of a marriage not meant to be irregular or illegal.
Permit me now to explain why I sought you in another guise and name than
my own. I could scarcely place in M. Lebeau the confidence which I now
unreservedly place in the Vicomte de Mauleon."

"_Cela va sans dire_. You believed, then, that calumny about the jewels;
you do not believe it now?"

"Now! my amazement is, that any one who had known you could believe it."

"Oh, how often, and with tears of rage in my exile--my wanderings--have I
asked that question of myself! That rage has ceased; and I have but one
feeling left for that credulous, fickle Paris, of which one day I was the