“The beginning of our married career was bright enough, I dare say, for some weeks only, when she grew very strange in her manner towards me. So remarkably strange, that I was reluctantly compelled to demand an explanation. Being satisfied with her false apologies, used as a way out of her difficulty, I remained content. She still continued nevertheless to maintain the same cold indifference towards me until your birth.
“Knowing that a son was born to me, who, if spared, would still keep up the good old name of Dunfern, I became altogether a foreigner to her past conduct, and it was only when recovering from her illness, after your birth, that I caught hold of the trap of deception she had laid since long before our marriage.
“She was found out to be the idolized of one man named Oscar Otwell, who occupied the position of tutor to her during her years of adoption; and not even did her love in return for him cease when I claimed her as my lawful wife, but continued, so far as I know, until now!
“I was therefore obliged through her mal-practices to shut her in from the gaze of outsiders, and also from my own. I chose Room No. 10 of this building as her confined apartment. You were only a child then of some two months, and, since, I have never beheld her face, which was false as it was lovely.
“My rage was boundless on the day I ordered her into my presence in that room, and, labouring under the passion of a jealous husband, I told her I would confine her within its walls so long as she existed.
“Over a year passed along, every month of which I grew more and more repentant, until the second Christmas of her seclusion, when I fully resolved to free her once more; at the same time, never again to share in my society or companionship.
“But, behold! the mischievous hand of her maid, Marjory Mason, whose services I retained after her imprisonment, was busy working its way for her escape, which she nimbly succeeded in effecting, exactly on the morning of Christmas Day, by stealing from the room of Rachel Hyde, Madam Fulham’s predecessor, the key of her door, and thereby released your mother. Ah! my son, from that hour my life has been a worthless coin, the harp of hideous helplessness struck forth its tunes of turmoil, trouble, and trial, and poured its mixed strains of life and death so vividly in my ear, that since I have, in a measure, been only a wanderer between their striking sounds of extremes.
“I shortly afterwards learned she took refuge in Audley Hall, a residence on the estate of its present owner—the Marquis of Orland, and situated some twenty miles distant, and, horrifying to relate, had been living with Oscar Otwell!
“The dreadful news of her conduct irritated me so that I only, in my last will and testament, bequeathed to her what would grant the ordinary comforts of life, provided I predeceased her. This reference to her remained until I accompanied you to Chitworth College, when President O’Sullivan revealed to me in silent friendship the fact of which I was wholly unaware, viz.—that she had long since sailed for America, at the same time handing me a New York Herald sent him by Otwell, and there I beheld the announcement of her marriage with him who ruined my life, and who has been the means of driving me into the pit of tearful tremor, out of which I never more shall climb.
“On returning home from Chitworth College I at once blanked the reference to her in my will, and never more wished to behold the face that swore to me such vows of villainy; the face that blasted my happiness for life; the mother of you, whom I now earnestly implore never to acknowledge, and who possesses every feature she outwardly bore.