“I did not marry General Laurance, though I entertained the purpose of a merely nominal union, and he acceded to my conditions, signing a marriage contract to adopt you, give you his name, settled upon you all his remaining fortune, except the real estate which I knew he had transferred to his son.  I think my intense hate and thirst for vengeance temporarily maddened me; for certainly had I been quite sane I should never have forced myself to hang upon the verge of such an odious gulf.  I was tempted by the prospect of making you the real heiress of the Laurance name and wealth, and of beggaring Cuthbert, his so-called wife and crippled child, by displaying the mortgage I held; and which will yet sweep them to penury, for the banker has failed, and Abbie Ames is penniless as Minnie Merle once was.

“While I floated down the dark stream to ruin, a blessed interposing hand arrested me.  Mr. Palma wrote that at last a glorious day of hope dawned on my weary, starless night.  Gerbert Audre was alive and anxious to testify to the validity of my marriage, and the perfect sanity and sobriety of Cuthbert when it was solemnized (his father was prepared to plead that he was insane from intoxication when he was inveigled into the ceremony); and oh, better, best of all, my persecutor had relented!  Peleg swore that his assertions regarding my character were untrue, were prompted by malice, stimulated by Laurance gold.  Having been arrested by Mr. Palma and carried before a magistrate, he had written and signed a noble vindication of me.  To you he avows I owe his tardy recantation and complete justification of my past; and you will find among those papers his letter to me upon this subject.

“My daughter, what do we not owe to Erle Palma?  God bless him—­now—­and for ever!  And may the dearest, fondest wishes of his heart be fulfilled as completely as have been his promises to me.”

Regina’s face was shrouded by her mother’s dress, but thinking of Mrs. Carew, she sank lower at Mrs. Orme’s feet, knowing that her sad heart could not echo that prayer.

“As yet my identity has not been suspected, but the end is at hand, and I am about to break the vials of wrath upon their heads.  Mr. Palma only waits to hear from me to bring suit against Cuthbert for desertion and bigamy, and against Rene Laurance, the arch-demon of my luckless carried life, for wilful slander, premeditated defamation of character.  My lawful unstained wife-hood will be established, your spotless birth and lineage triumphantly proclaimed; and I shall see my own darling, my Regina Laurance, reigning as mistress in the halls of her ancestors.  To confront you with your father and grandfather, I have called you to Paris, and when I have talked with Uncle Orme, whose step I hear, I shall be able to tell you definitely of the hour when the thunderbolt will be hurled into the camp of our enemies.  Kiss me good-night.  God bless my child.”

CHAPTER XXXII.