"My good friend," said Lady Eversleigh, "if I do not need your aid to
restore my child to me, I need it to restore me to my mother. I cannot
realize the truth that I have a mother, I can only feel it. I can only
feel how she must have suffered by remembering my own anguish. And
hers, how much more cruel, how prolonged, how hopeless! You will see to
this at once, Mr. Larkspur, while I go to my child."
"Lord bless you, my lady," said Mr. Larkspur, cheerily, "there's no
occasion to look very far. You have not forgotten the lady, she that
lives so quiet, yet so stylish, near Richmond, and that Sir Reginald
Eversleigh pays such attention to? You remember all I told you about
her, and how I found out that she was Mr. Dale's aunt, and he know
nothing about her?"
"Yes, yes," said Lady Eversleigh, breathlessly, "I remember."
"Well, my lady, that party near Richmond is Lady Verner, your
ladyship's mother."
Lady Eversleigh was well nigh overwhelmed by the throng of feelings
which pressed upon her. She, the despised outcast, the first-cousin of
the man who had scorned her, a connection of the great family into
which she had married, her husband's equal in rank, and in fortune!
She, the woman whose beauty had been used to lure Valentine Jernam to
his death, she who had almost witnessed his murder; she owed to
Valentine's brother the discovery of her parentage, the defeat of her
calumniators, her restoration to a high place in society, and to family
ties, the destruction of Reginald Eversleigh's designs on Lady Verner's
property, and--greatest, best boon of all--the recovery of her child.
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