"I have written this letter of explanation in order to show that I had not, as appearances would lead one to believe, any intention of concealing my wretched marriage from Miss Adair; this would have been base deceit; and from such a charge you will, I am sure, as Miss Adair does most fully, exonerate me. Early in life one woman betrayed me; ten years later another heartlessly sacrifices me to prejudice! Truly I owe women no gratitude!
"Poor, poor Flora! God help her!" exclaimed Mrs. Adair, as she finished reading the letter, and handed it to her son, who in his turn exclaimed, after having read it, "But how was it ever allowed to go so far without your knowing that Earnscliffe had been married?"
"Edward, all retrospection is useless now," answered Mrs. Adair, sadly; "but I do not think that any one has been to blame in this unhappy case. Mrs. Elton introduced us to Mr. Earnscliffe, in Rome, as an unmarried man, with whose father and mother her family had been very intimate, but they had died many many years ago, and she had lost sight of their son--he was a baby at the time of their death--until she met him on the Continent. She spoke in high terms of his personal abilities, his social position and fortune, and of these two latter advantages we know she thinks a great deal. How could I suppose then that it was necessary to make any further inquiries about him? And, as he says in his letter, he gave Flora a history of his life before he asked her to engage herself to him, which history she told me, but of course as she understood it, or, indeed, misunderstood it. All this misery has been caused by her unfortunate mistake; yet it was a most natural one. Mr. Earnscliffe evidently did not _distinctly_ say that it was his _wife_ who had been false to him; and Flora, supposing everybody to know that the Church does not recognise the divorce law, took it for granted that he had not been married, or else that he would not have thought of asking her--a Catholic--to be his. The only thing about which I was not satisfied was as to Mr. Earnscliffe's sentiments upon religion, and I besought of Flora not to marry him unless he would become a professed believer in Christianity, and at all events to wait a year, and thus let him have time to study its doctrines. But she would listen to nothing of the kind; he was in the true faith, she declared, because he had such an ardent desire of the knowledge of truth. From the first he consented to all the conditions required by the Church. Poor child, she could not bear to insist upon his waiting a year, and now she is obliged to send him away for ever. You, yourself, Edward, would scarcely have been able to keep up, if you had seen her as I did when we came in."