She was Major Warfield's forsaken wife. Herbert, I feel as though I
never, never could forgive my father!"
"Traverse, if Major Warfield had wilfully and wantonly forsaken your
mother, I should say that your resentment was natural and right. Who
should be an honorable woman's champion if not her own son? But
Major Warfield, as well as his wife, was more sinned against than
sinning. Your parents were both victims of a cruel conspiracy, and
he suffered as much in his way as she did in hers," said Herbert.
"I always thought, somehow, that my dear mother was a forsaken wife.
She never told me so, but there was some-thing about her
circumstances and manners, her retired life, her condition, so much
below her deserts, her never speaking of her husband's death, which
would have been natural for her to do, had she been a widow--all,
somehow, went to give me the impression that my father had abandoned
us. Lately I had suspected Major Warfield had something to do with
the sad affair, though I never once suspected him to be my father.
So much for natural instincts," said Traverse, with a melancholy
smile.
"Traverse," said Herbert, with the design of drawing him off from
sad remembrances of his mother's early trials. "Traverse, this
confession, signed and witnessed as it is, will wonderfully simplify
your course of action in regard to the deliverance of Madame Le
Noir.
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