“Margaret! my Margaret!” exclaimed Ralph Houston, forgetting everything else, and springing forward. Tenderly lifted in the arms of Ralph, Margaret was conveyed to the parsonage, and laid on the bed in the best chamber. Here efforts to restore her to consciousness were vainly pursued for a long time.
When at last a change came, returning life was scarcely less alarming than apparent death had been. For weeks she wandered in a most distressing delirium.
It was about this time that Major Helmstedt and Lord Falconridge had a long business conversation. The major, being perfectly assured in regard to his identity and his claims, delivered up into his lordship’s hands such portion of his mother’s estate as he would have legally inherited. After the transfer was made, Lord Falconridge executed an instrument, conveying the whole disputed property to his sister, Margaret Helmstedt, “and her heirs forever.”
Not until Margaret was fully restored to health was the whole secret history of her mother’s most unhappy life revealed. The facts, obtained at intervals, were, in brief, these:
Marguerite De Lancie, tempted by inordinate social ambition, had consented to a private marriage with Lord William Daw.
His lordship’s tutor, the Rev. Mr. Murray, became a party to the plan, even to the extent of performing the marriage ceremony. His lordship’s valet was the only witness. The certificate of marriage was left in the hands of the bride. The ceremony took place at Saratoga, in the month of July.
Two months after, early in September, Lord William Daw, summoned by his father to the bedside of his declining mother, sailed for England.
Marguerite received from him one letter, dated at sea, and in which he addressed her as his “beloved wife,” and signed himself, boy-loverlike, her “adoring husband.” This letter was directed to Lady William Daw, under cover to Marguerite De Lancie. It was the only one that he ever had the opportunity of writing to her. It arrived about the time that the wife first knew that she was also destined to become a mother.
In the January following the receipt of this letter, Marguerite went with the Comptons to the New Year’s evening ball at the Executive Mansion. It was while standing up in a quadrille that she overheard two gentlemen speak of the wreck of the bark Venture off the coast of Cornwall, with the loss of all on board.
Marguerite fainted; and thence followed the terrible illness that brought her to the borders of death—of death, for which indeed she prayed and hoped; for what a wretched condition was hers! She, one of the most beautiful, accomplished, and high-spirited queens of society, found herself fated to become a mother, without the power of proving that she had ever possessed the right to the name of wife.