Within the following year, his son was born; but before that event he had fully learned the character of the woman he had married, and he determined that no child of his should be disgraced by any knowledge of its mother, or contaminated by association with her.

To my wife and myself he confided his plans, and, as we had no children of our own, he pledged us to the adoption of his child while yet unborn.

An old and trusted nurse in our family was also taken into the secret, but not the physician employed on that occasion, as he was a man of no principle and already in league with the false wife against her husband.

When the child was born, Mrs.Mainwaring was very ill and the babe received comparatively little notice from the attendant physician.

A dead child, born but a few hours earlier, was therefore easily substituted for the living child of Harold Mainwaring, while the latter was secretly conveyed to my own home.
"A few weeks later, the child was privately christened in a small church on the outskirts of Melbourne and the event duly recorded upon the church records.