I know now that I was but the victim of her plot." She stopped abruptly, but Lord Arleigh encouraged her.
"Tell me all, Madaline," he said, gently; "none of this is your fault, my poor wife.

Tell me all." "The duchess was very kind to my mother, and befriended her in many ways.

She interested the duke in her case, and he promised to find employment for my unfortunate father, who went to his house to see him.
Whether my father had ever done wrong before, I cannot tell.

Sometimes I fear that he had done so, for no man falls suddenly into crime.

In few words--oh, Norman, how hard they are to say!--what he saw in the duke's mansion tempted him.