"That I can never tell you; it was an act of fiendish revenge--cruel, ruthless, treacherous. I cannot reveal the perpetrator. My wife did not deceive me, did not even know that I had been deceived; she thought, poor child, that I was acquainted with the whole of her father's story, but I was not. And now, Lord Mountdean, tell me, do you think I did wrong?"
He raised his care-worn, haggard face as he asked the question and the earl was disturbed at sight of the terrible pain in it.
Chapter XXXVII.
The reason of his separation from his wife revealed, Lord Arleigh again put the question:
"Do you think, Lord Mountdean, that I have done wrong?"
The earl looked at him.
"No," he replied, "I cannot say that you have."
"I loved her," continued Lord Arleigh, "but I could not make the daughter of a convict the mistress of my house, the mother of my children. I could not let my children point to a felon's cell as the cradle of their origin. I could not sully my name, outrage a long line of noble ancestors, by making my poor wife mistress of Beechgrove. Say, if the same thing had happened to you, would you not have acted in like manner?"
"I believe that I should," answered the earl, gravely.
"However dearly you might love a woman, you could not place your coronet on the brow of a convict's daughter," said Lord Arleigh. "I love my wife a thousand times better than my life, yet I could not make her mistress of Beechgrove."