The son had been reared at a distance, put to school at Lyons, and unavowed to the second wife, who had brought an ample dower, and whom that discovery might have deterred from the altar.

Unacknowledged through life, in death at least the son's rights are proclaimed; and Olivier Dalibard feels that Jean Bellanger has died in vain! For days has the pale Provencal been closeted with lawyers; but there is no hope in litigation.

The proofs of the marriage, the birth, the identity, come out clear and clearer; and the beardless schoolboy at Lyons reaps all the profit of those nameless schemes and that mysterious death.

Olivier Dalibard desires the friendship, the intimacy of the heir; but the heir is consigned to the guardianship of a merchant at Lyons, near of kin to his mother, and the guardian responds but coldly to Olivier's letters.
Suddenly the defeated aspirant seems reconciled to his loss.

The widow Bellanger has her own separate fortune, and it is large beyond expectation.