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Updated: May 20, 2025
I shall direct this letter by the name and title you now bear, so as to prevent mistakes; but it is the last time I shall so address you. And I sign myself, for all eternity, "Your true husband, WALDEMAR DE VOLASKI." Valerie read the cruel letter to its close, then dropped it on her lap, and sank back in her chair, helpless, breathless, almost lifeless.
Oh, that I had been brave enough to tell the whole truth of my marriage with Waldemar de Volaski to the Duke of Hereward before he had committed his honor to my keeping by making me his wife! That course would have saved me then with less of suffering than I have to bear now. But I weakly permitted myself to be forced, with this secret on my conscience, into a marriage with the Duke of Hereward.
Valerie knew all about this appointment, and had therefore fixed the hour of noon as the safest time for her interview with the count. Twelve o'clock, therefore, found her dressed in her deepest mourning, and seated in her private drawing-room, awaiting the advent of her most dreaded visitor, Waldemar de Volaski. Valerie, in an agony of terror, waited for her expected visitor.
"MARRIED. At the Church of Notre Dame, on Tuesday, March 1st, by the Most Venerable, the Archbishop of Paris, the Duke of Hereward, to Valerie, only daughter of the Baron de la Motte." With the cry and spring of a panther robbed of its young, Volaski bounded to his feet. His rage and anguish were equal, and beyond all power of articulate or rational utterance.
"They told me our marriage was not legal, was not binding!" she panted under her breath. "It should have been religiously, sacredly binding up on you as it was upon me, until we could have made it legal. It is amazing that you could have dreamed of marriage with another man!" muttered Volaski. "But they told me you were dead.
She waited all the forenoon in expectation of receiving a note from the Count de Volaski, either accepting her appointment or arranging another one; but when the clock struck the hour of noon without her having heard from him, she naturally concluded that he meant to answer her note in person, by coming at the hour named. So she went down into the small drawing-room to be ready to receive him.
"'What man? Why, daughter, the Count Waldemar de Volaski the man who came here with the woman this morning the man whom you mistook for your own husband, the Duke of Hereward, but whom I knew to be Waldemar de Volaski, once my betrothed, who was said to have been killed in a duel, shot through the heart, a quarter of a century ago!" answered the lady, emphatically.
"I am glad of that; but I am very sorry you have invited the Count de Volaski to dinner to-morrow." "Oh, why?" "Because I do not like company." "He is only one guest and will dine with us quietly. He will amuse you." "No, he will not; he will bore me. I wish you would write and put him off." "Impossible, my dear Valerie! What earthly excuse could I make for such an unpardonable piece of rudeness?"
Although, indeed, you may have done so," he added, as with an after-thought. "We have met before," replied the Count de Volaski, in a low and measured tone. "Of course! Of course! You are quite old friends," said the duke, gayly. Fortunately, then a diversion was made.
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