He looked down gravely at her, but still again with kindness in his eyes, and then he said: "No, no. Never, Louise, never. You were always too good and true, too fond of the unhappy man to have been aught but faithful. And, although I opposed his marriage with you, it was never because of your own self but because of your uncle's principles. Had he had his way, which I thank God was not permitted, he would have brought back the false-hearted, grieving Stuarts to the throne; he would have cursed his country and its laws and religion. But for you, Louise, for you, child, I never had aught of distrust, but only pity deep and infinite that you should wed with such a poor thing as my own dead kinsman and heir, this lad's father."
"God bless you," said she, seizing his hand with her well one and kissing it ere he could draw it away, "God bless you for your words as I bless Him for having raised you up to be even as a father to the fatherless--to my poor fatherless boy. And, Charles, if those whom you loved so well, your own wife and child, had not been taken from you, I would pray night and day for them as I pray for you."
He turned away and passed his hand swiftly across his eyes as she mentioned those whom he had once loved so dearly and who, as all the world knows, were both torn from him in one short week! 'Twas by one of those dreadful visitations of smallpox which carries off kings and queens impartially with their humbler subjects, as was the case fifteen or sixteen years before, when it swept away the Emperor of Germany and the Dauphin and Dauphiness of France as well as their child, and also ravaged both those great countries.
"But now, ere anything else can be done, I must know all that has occurred since your husband's death. Something I have heard from you, Louise, and something from other sources yet there is much I cannot comprehend. Nay, more, there are some things that seem incredible. It is said he was buried by the subscription of a few friends--many of them the lowest of the low, with whom he in life wassailed and caroused--yet, how could it be?"
"He was penniless, Charles," my mother sobbed; "penniless. He had nothing."
"Penniless! Penniless! Nay. Nay. His brother was here in London at the time and I bade him let Gerald have all necessaries in reason, and I dispatched to Mr. Considine a hundred guineas for his funeral by a sure hand. I could not let the heir to my title----"