The Central Glamorgan Gazette, and General, Commercial, and Agricultural Advertiser. — 1892-07-22 (Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan, Wales)

ADRIENNF; DURAND.  "What does she mean by the relation in which you *and to her?" asked M. Mendon.  II For an instant the priest seemed to hesitate as to 'the course he should pursue. Be then looked his cowTpaoiou straight in the eye, and said-1 " Perfect frankness will be the best policy with you ?ow. We are pledged to sustain each other, and I . will not hes:tate to trust you. I revealed to Adrienne fact I have hitherto kept secret from her. I am Julien Durand, the husband of M. Lecoues daughter, and the father of her child. On the death of my wife, I took the vows, and the little girl was received into the nunnery of which I afterwards became the confessor. Thus I was able to watch over her as she grew to womanhood; and it was a great shock when you revealed to me a few evenings ago that she had taken advantage of my absence from France to elope and abjure the calling to which I dedicated her from her infancy." "Can Adrienne really be your daughter?" M. Mendon asked. "I had believed—had hoped that she would prove to be the child of—of your brother." " Ah! that old story is known to you, then. Louise Montreuil was united to my only brother on the same night that gave my hand to Estelle Lecour. We were four romantic and silly young people, who thought a clandestine marriage the shortest road to happiness. It paved the way to death for one—worse than death to another; the third lived through years of misery, and I concealed my wrecked hopes beneath the monk's cowl."  "What was then the fate of the child that certainly came into existence ?"  'M. Montreuil refused to recognise its existence. He induced his unhappy daughter to believe that, she had been the victim of a vilainous deception, and the infant would be a burden and a shame to her. Ile compelled her to relinquish it to the care of my wife. who undertook to nurse it with her own. But the lie girl never flourished after she was separated from her mother; she died before the close of her second year, and my wife did not low; survive her; both lie buried in the same grave. I returned from South America, where some complicated business affairs detained me until this time, only in season to bury her, and receive my own daughter uuder my protection. "I was disgusted with life, and I placed the child with the same lady superior who had educated her mother, to be reared RS one distined to take the veil. I took the vows, as I told you, and remained uear her."  _ "And your brot'or ; what of him through all these years? Why dal he not claim his wife before she gave her hand to my brother, and prove the falsehood of the story %hich had ia.posed on her?"  An expression of sulTerii.g swept over the face of the priest, and his voice su.,k, as he said—  "Henri was in prison., lie lay in the dungeons of the Pastille for years. and when lie came f..rth, it was amid the raging mob which destroyed that dreadful pile. His nearest friends had no suspicion ..f *hat. had become of him, with such caut wero the measures for his incsreeration taken I te beret] that he had been murdered on Ilia journ y to Paris, and he body coneesk d. All my efforts to discorei hie fate provid fruitlesq, sod I at letivii rt•li••tm,sh,d every attenal L. him lip :104 Io*PL. lien a 'l7 Merable phantom 111030 Lo,