He answered that he had driven the “ge’man” down Goblin Hall road, but had stopped the carriage some distance from the great gate, at the “ge’man’s” orders, where the “ge’man” got out, telling him to wait. The “ge’man” was gone about fifteen minutes, and then came up the road from the direction of the gate, bringing a child, who seemed to be asleep, in his arms, and that another child—a little black child—followed, running and screaming, until the carriage drove off and left her behind. He drove the “ge’man” to the hotel, where he got out to pay his bill and get his valise, and then he drove them to the depot, where they took the 1:30 train for Baltimore. That was all he knew.
Roma thanked the man and dismissed him.
“Now let us go home,” she said.
The order was given, and the carriage started.
“And now you see she must have been chloroformed in the first instance,” said Mr. Merritt.
“And you say she was his own child, Roma? How could that have been, my dear?” inquired Dr. Shaw.
“Yes, dear friends, Owlet is William Hanson’s own child,” Roma replied.
“Explain, my dear,” said Mr. Merritt.
“That poor young woman, known to us as Madam Marguerite Nouvellini, who died in my arms in Washington a few days ago, was the abandoned wife of William Hanson, who had married her under a false name when he was but a youth and she little more than a child. She never knew his real name. A few months after their marriage he left her in Paris, and went, under pretence of business, to California, from where he wrote piteous letters from a pretended bed of sickness—letters which grew shorter and more piteous—until at length they prepared her to receive a black-bordered and black-sealed letter from his invented physician announcing his death from the fever. To the hour of her death she never knew her decamped husband was still living.”
“Roma, my dear child, are you quite sure of what you are telling us? For the story shows the man to be a greater sinner, if possible, than we have yet believed him,” said Parson Shaw.