“This drunken revel was succeeded by an illness of several weeks’ duration, during which I nursed him with the utmost care, playing my part so well that the result came sooner than I anticipated, but was not what I desired. I must be his wife or nothing, and at last weakened bodily and mentally by disease and the brandy he drank in so large quantities he promised to make me his wife on condition that I kept it a secret until he chose to tell of it himself. As there was no Protestant clergyman near Chateau des Fleurs he said we would marry ourselves, and he made me believe that by joining hands and promising to take each other for man and wife after the manner of the English Prayer Book, we should really become so. ‘Such things were common in America,’ he said, ‘when a priest was not easy of access.’ Of course, when it was convenient this private ceremony, though perfectly legal, must be repeated in public, and this he swore solemnly should be done, and I trusted him and went blind-folded to my ruin, but innocent—oh, Queenie, as innocent as you are to-day.”
“Yes,” Queenie rejoined, with a look of unutterable anguish upon her face, for now she had lost all faith in and respect for her father, but as yet had no relenting towards the poor deceived mother. “Yes, go on.”
Christine flushed a little as she went on rapidly: “I believe I was his wife and wished to remain at the Chateau, but he would not hear to me. ‘We must go to Marseilles,’ he said, and thither he went, and he hired a suite of rooms for me, but did not remain there himself, though he came often to see me, and treated me with kindness and consideration, but did not bring the clergyman as he had promised to do. ‘He had not met one of the right sort,’ he said, and there was no haste as I was really his wife. And so matters went on until a great fear took possession of me that all was not right, and then you were born, and when you were three or four weeks old he came to me and seemed to love you so much, and was so kind to me that I begged him on my knees to acknowledge me to the world, and take me with him to Chateau des Fleurs. Then it was that he undeceived me and told me how I had been duped, and did it as coolly as if to ruin an innocent girl was nothing but pastime for gentlemen like him, and he laughed at me for taking it as I did, for at first I raved like a mad woman, but it did no good.
“‘Christine,’ he said, ‘you must be very weak to suppose for a moment that I was in earnest, or that you could ever live at Chateau des Fleurs as other than a servant. Men of my stamp do not marry girls like you, or in fact marry at all in our sober senses. I will admit that I am far more to blame than you, but you can never be my wife, though I will care for the child. It is lonely at Chateau des Fleurs; a baby’s voice and baby’s prattle will make it more endurable. I have wanted a child so much, and if Margaret had left me one I should never have done what I have.’
“You will not believe me if I tell you that when I heard this my first impulse was to fall at his feet and tell him of the little girl in Paris, thoughts of whom had haunted me continually, making me sometimes cry out with pain and remorse. But I had gone too far to confess. He would never have forgiven me, and all my ambitious dreams for my own child would have come to naught. I had no hope for myself; his imperious manner and cold, disdainful words crushed all that; but there arose in me an intense desire to see you a lady, and I begged him to take you, whatever he might do with me, and he consented at last, but bade me stay where I was until I heard from him again. He wished to make some change in his household, he said, for if he took you home it would be as the child of his dead wife. I was only the nurse, who might or might not be retained; it would depend upon myself.
“Then he left me, and I knew I was no more to him than a cast-off garment, of which he was tired, and that in whatever arrangements he might make, no thought for me or my comfort would actuate him; and in my anguish I felt that my punishment was greater than I could bear, and I even thought to kill myself and you too. But a thought of little Margery prevented me. Somebody must care for her, and so I lived on and waited and hoped the time might come when I could restore her to her rights.
“On quitting Marseilles your father went to Chateau des Fleurs, and, on one pretext or another, dismissed all the servants in his employ, filling their places with strangers, who knew nothing of his past life, and who readily believed him when he told them of his wife who had died in Rome, and of his little daughter whom he was soon to bring home. A huge nursery, which communicated with his apartments, was fitted up with every possible luxury. And then he bade me come; and I took you to him as his lawful child, while I was only the head nurse—for he hired another woman to look after you, giving me the post of looking after her.
“I remember so well the day I took you to the Chateau and waited for his coming, but waited in vain, for though he knew I was in the house, he kept aloof from me and took his dinner, and read his paper, and smoked his cigar, and then at last he sauntered into the nursery with that air of elegant indifference and superiority so natural to him. I had not seen him since his visit to Marseilles, when you were a few weeks old; but he simply bade me good-evening, and asked if I had found everything in readiness. Then he walked up to the cradle, and when you raised your little hands toward him as if asking him to take you, he lifted you in his arms, kissed your lips, and laying your head upon his shoulder said: ‘My daughter, my heiress, Reinette Hetherton.’
“I knew he had adopted you as his own. But I was only your hired nurse, who was entitled to consideration in the household because I had been the trusted maid of his wife. This raised me somewhat above my fellow-servants, who treated me with a great deal of respect, and asked me many questions concerning my late mistress and Mr. Hetherton, who puzzled them with his cold, quiet, haughty manner.
“With your advent at the Chateau all his former habits were changed, and he seldom left home except to go to Paris, where he never stayed more than a day or two. All his old associates were dropped, and few ever came to see him. And yet he did not seem to be lonely, so great was his love for you. From the moment he took you in his arms and kissed you, he was perfectly devoted to you, and had you brought to him in the library every night after his dinner was over. I generally took you to him myself, but he never noticed me by a word or look, and this so enraged me that I spoke out to him at last, and threatened to go away and take you with me, if he continued to treat me with so much contempt.