Page:Anna Katharine Green - Leavenworth Case.djvu/221

Rh there met a young woman whose grace and charm had such an effect upon him that he relinquished all thought of the Providence lady, though it was some time before he could face the prospect of marrying the one who had so greatly interested him; as she was not only in humble circumstances, but was encumbered with a child concerning whose parentage the neighbors professed ignorance, and she had nothing to say. But, as is very apt to be the case in an affair like this, love and admiration soon got the better of worldly wisdom. Taking his future in his hands, he offered himself as her husband, when she immediately proved herself worthy of his regard by entering at once into those explanations he was too much of a gentleman to demand.

The story she told was pitiful. She proved to be an American by birth, her father having been a well-known merchant of Chicago. While he lived, her home was one of luxury, but just as she was emerging into womanhood he died. It was at his funeral she met the man destined to be her ruin. How he came there she never knew; he was not a friend of her father’s. It is enough he was there, and saw her, and that in three weeks—don’t shudder, she was such a child—they were married. In twenty-four hours she knew what that word meant for her; it meant blows. Everett, I am telling no fanciful story. In twenty-four hours after that girl was married, her husband, coming drunk into the house, found her in his way, and knocked her down. It was but the beginning. Her father’s estate, on being settled up, proving to be less than expected, he carried her off to England, where he did not wait to be drunk in order to maltreat her. She was not free from his cruelty night or day. Before she was sixteen, she had run the whole gamut of human