Page:George Gibbs--Love of Monsieur.djvu/73

 mother—that if one of them married a Spaniard he would refuse her a part of his fortune and deny her as a child of his—”

“I pray you, monsieur—”

“I crave your patience. Lorance, your mother, married Monsieur Clerke, and Julie, the younger sister, married Sir George Maltby. That is well known. The elder sister was Eloise.” His voice fell, and the name was spoken with all the soft tenderness of the name itself. “Perhaps you do not know, madame, that she, too, was married—”

“There was a mystery,” she muttered. “I heard—” Then she stopped.

“Madame heard?” he asked, politely. But she was silent again.

“Eloise was married,” he continued, “while visiting at the château of the Duc de Nemours, near Paris, to Don Luis d’Añasco, who was a Spaniard. Fearing her father’s wrath and disinheritance, this unfortunate woman concealed the facts of this marriage, the record of which was the acknowledgment of the priest who married them and the statements of a nurse 61