And so she had wearied him, who saw in her no more than a sweet loveliness that had cloyed him presently.

And when the chance was offered him by Bentinck and his father, he took it and went his ways, and this sweet flower that he had plucked from its Normandy garden to adorn him for a brief summer's day was left to wilt, discarded.
The tale that greeted Everard on his return from Ireland was that, broken-hearted, she had died--crushed neath her load of shame.

For it was said that there had been no marriage.
The rumor of her death had gone abroad, and it had been carried to England and my Lord Rotherby by a cousin of hers--the last living Maligny--who crossed the channel to demand of that stolid gentleman satisfaction for the dishonor put upon his house.

All the satisfaction the poor fellow got was a foot or so of steel through the lungs, of which he died; and there, may it have seemed to Rotherby, the matter ended.
But Everard remained--Everard, who had loved her with a great and almost sacred love; Everard, who swore black ruin for my Lord Rotherby--the rumor of which may also have been carried to his lordship and stimulated his activities in having Everard hunted down after the Braemar fiasco of 1715.
But before that came to pass Everard had discovered that the rumor of her death was false--put about, no doubt, out of fear of that same cousin who had made himself champion and avenger of her honor.

Everard sought her out, and found her perishing of want in an attic in the Cour des Miracles some four months later--eight months after Rotherby's desertion.
In that sordid, wind-swept chamber of Paris' most abandoned haunt, a son had been born to Antoinette de Maligny two days before Everard had come upon her.