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Updated: June 20, 2025
"Good-morning, Valerie," he said immediately preparing to obey her. She held out her hand. He took it, pressed it lightly, dropped it, turned and left the room. After this day the Count de Volaski came daily to the Hotel de la Motte on some errand connected with the duchess' financial business. These interviews were as coldly formal as the most severe etiquette would have required.
They had two children Alphouse, a colonel in the Chasseurs d'Afrique, now in Algiers; and Aimee, now in the Convent of St. Rosalie. It was when the late Count de Volaski was here as the minister from Russia, that the acquaintance between the two families commenced and ripened into intimacy and the intimacy into friendship. Then Waldemar and Aimee were betrothed."
Yes, that I am!" said the count, heartily. The next day Waldemar de Volaski returned to his regiment at St. Petersburg.
You can prove this to your own satisfaction by coming to San Vito and examining the church register as to the dates of his birth, baptism, and so forth; by which you will find that he was born just five months after I left your roof, and just six months after our return from our long yachting cruise, and the renewal of my acquaintance with Count de Volaski, at the British minister's dinner.
"My position was degrading, agonizing, intolerable. I found myself, though guiltless of any intentional wrong-doing, in the horrible dilemma of a wife with two living husbands. "Yes, by the laws of love and nature, justice and the church, I was the wife of Waldemar de Volaski; by the laws of France and England, I was the wife of the Duke of Hereward.
Then the dreadful light of conviction burst full upon his startled intelligence. Count Waldemar de Volaski had been her acquaintance at the Court of St. Petersburg! He it was, then, who had been the hero of her foolish love story and mad marriage, before the duke had ever seen her. He it was who had been her constant visitor during the duke's absence. He it was who was the companion of her flight!
"You exposed more than your own life by the escapade, sir!" said the elder Volaski, "You abducted a minor, sir; for doing which you might have been prosecuted for felony, and sent to the gaol! a fate so much worse than your death in the duel would have been for the honor of your family, that, had you been consigned to it, I should have cursed the hour you were born and blown my own brains out, in expiation of my share in your existence!"
Villeponte then related that on the Wednesday of the preceding week, madame, the Duchess of Hereward, had left Paris in company with Monsieur the Count de Volaski; that they took a coupe on the evening express for Marseilles, traveling alone together without servants or attendants; that they were now domiciliated at a vine-dresser's cottage in the little village of San Vito, at the foot of the Appenines.
After her death, all her papers and other effects had to be overhauled and examined and her son took care to read every paper that he was free to handle. Among these was a copy of the will of the late Waldemar de Volaski, by which he bequeathed to Valerie de la Motte Scott, Duchess of Hereward, all his personal property. Here was both a revelation and a mystery!
There may I will send for a physician," he added, as he went down stairs. Valerie kept her room all day. Count de Volaski came to dinner at eight o'clock and was received by the duke alone.
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