“Yes, all these things have been repeated to me; but the opinion of lawyers, fortunately, is not exactly the decision of legal tribunals.”
“Then you are determined to contest my claims?”
“I am not disposed to yield mine without contest, certainly.”
“Madam,” I commenced; and now every nerve in my body began to tremble, for the great moment of my fate had arrived—“madam, in this contest, if it becomes one in an English court of law, the life and reputation of your only brother must be cruelly brought before the world; would you make no sacrifice to avoid that?”
“But if this same brother was your father also, it is for you, not me, to save his name from the scandal of a public court,” she rejoined, sharply. “The fact that he married Lady Jane while your mother was alive, I would willingly conceal.”
“No, madam, that you mistake. My mother died months before Lord Clare’s marriage?”
“How and when did she die?”
“The how does not concern your ladyship. As for the when, I was present when she died near the City of Granada, and though a child at the time, can never forget it; would to God it were possible. After that—months after it must have been, for we had travelled from Spain between the two events—I saw the cortége pass the tent where I lay, returning from my father’s marriage with his last wife. In this he committed no legal fault—and let us hope intended no moral wrong—though a deep wrong it was, from beginning to end; but he doubtless was unmindful of the singular law which made his first marriage binding.”
“Then what is there to conceal? Why should we shrink from investigation?” she cried.
“The wrong done to my poor mother, alas! that remains, and I would do anything, give up anything rather than have it heaped upon my father’s memory.”