Wife in Name Only

by Charlotte M. Brame

Rapidly enough Lord Charlewood filled up another paper, which was signed by the doctor and himself; then Stephen Letsom gathered them all together. Margaret Dornham saw him take from the sideboard a plain oaken box bound in brass, and lock the papers in it.

"There will be no difficulty about the little lady's identification while this lasts," he said, "and the papers remain undestroyed."

She could not account for the impulse that led her to watch him so closely, while she wondered what the papers could be worth.

Then both gentlemen turned their attention from the box to the child. Lord Charlewood would be leaving directly, and it would be the last time that he, at least, could see the little one. There was all a woman's love in his heart and in his face, as he bent down to kiss it and say farewell.

"In three years' time, when I come back again," he said, "she will be three years old--she will walk and talk. You must teach her to say my name, Mrs. Dornham, and teach her to love me."

Then he bade farewell to the doctor who had been so kind a friend to him, leaving something in his hand which made his heart light for many a long day afterward.

"I am a bad correspondent, Dr. Letsom," he said; "I never write many letters--but you may rely upon hearing from me every six months. I shall send you half-yearly checks--and you may expect me in three years from this at latest; then my little Madaline will be of a manageable age, and I can take her to Wood Lynton."

So they parted, the two who had been so strangely brought together--parted with a sense of liking and trust common among Englishmen who feel more than they express. Lord Charlewood looked round him as he left the town.

"How little I thought," he said, "that I should leave my dead wife and living child here! It was a town so strange to me that I hardly even knew its name."

On arriving at his destination, to his great joy, and somewhat to his surprise, Lord Charlewood found that his father was better; he had been afraid of finding him dead. The old man's joy on seeing his son again was almost pitiful in its excess--he held his hands in his.