I
remembered the little locket I had found, and saw Hortense's and my
mistake about it now; but I would not speak of it then, I could not. I
thought of Hortense's mysterious letter, and puzzled over it in
painful confusion, but I would not mention that either, until it had
shown me its meaning more definitely. One thing I did ask, with a
trembling, unsteady voice:
"What became of this Miss Campuzano, did you hear, Cousin Bessie?"
"She married the Frenchman, dear, as she intended from the first. She
liked the name and the prospect altogether of becoming his wife."
"What was his name?"
"Bayard de Beaumont, a good one it is I believe."
"Bayard de Beaumont!" I fairly screamed after her. "Oh, Cousin
Bessie," I cried--"how very strange all this is, my nerves are on fire
with agitation. I know him. I have met him, he is the brother of my
little friend Hortense, whose family name I never happened to tell
you."
"Well! that is the man, and a poor prize he had in his Spanish
beauty," cousin Bessie went on. "She was as dazzling as the sunlight,
and as beautiful as the richest exotic, but she was as heartless as a
stone. He was the maddest man in love, they said, that ever lived. He
made an idol of that woman and simply worshipped her, and she smiled
upon him, the cold cruel traitress, as she smiled upon everybody; won
his heart and his senses with her artful wiles, and in the belief that
he was rich, as well as high-born, she married him.
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