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Updated: June 23, 2025
Under the laws of the kingdom the princess was his legal mate, the Grand Duchess of Ecknor, but my mother was his wife before God and the Church. The Grand Duke gave her a large fortune, and she had a beautiful home near the palace. Everyone knew and pitied her, but they respected her. The Grand Duke soon ceased to care for his morganatic wife, but he never deserted her.
The Grand Duke is dead, and His Majesty has taken charge of the matter. The Grand Duchess is a ruler herself, at the present time. It is true she is only a foolish girl, who ran away to marry a nonentity but affairs of state are greater than affairs of the heart. At all risks she must return to Ecknor. I must be certain of her identity before I can make another move.
"I never knew my father, Mark," she went on, "and yet I heard of his death only a short time ago in Washington. His name was not 'Atheson. He was a very great personage, no less than the Grand Duke of Ecknor, Prince Etkar." Mark started, but Ruth put up her hand. "You promised. Let me go on." "My mother married my father, who then called himself Edgar Atheson, in London.
He was the younger son of the then reigning Grand Duke and had left home for political reasons, expecting never to return. But his father and his elder brother were both killed by a bomb a few days after his marriage to my mother. He returned to Ecknor, and she went with him. In six months he had married, legally but not legitimately, a princess of the protecting kingdom.
He saw the tall young Englishman at his desk, in front of him the portrait of a charming child. "My niece," he had said. "She's a winsome little thing. I miss her sorely." He recalled, too, how someone had related the romance of Edgar Atheson, who had later become Grand Duke of Ecknor. Donald Murray had been strangely silent, he remembered.
You know that you are next in line of succession, but you do not know something else. You do not know that your father is even now dangerously ill. Your escapade has been hushed up to avoid scandal, for you may be sitting on the throne within a month. You must return to Ecknor, and you must return at once.
And, in the next column: GRAND DUCHESS CARLOTTA VICTIM OF WRECK Ruler of Ecknor Killed While on Her Way to Washington. The story was skillfully written. No one had "remembered," or at least influence had been able to suppress unpleasant comment. But for the Bishop the mere juxtaposition of words was enough. In fancy he was back in the Seminary at Rome where he had first met Donald Murray.
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