“A well invented story of high birth, unmerited misfortunes, and a long cherished passion for me, awakened my sympathy, and I soon imagined that nothing could repay my lover’s tenderness but the bestowal of my hand and fortune. I fancied myself deeply and devotedly attached to one who had submitted to the degradation of disguise for my sake, and, on the day when I attained my sixteenth year, I eloped with my lover, who now dropped his assumed title and adopted his true name of Wallingford. As my guardian was at that time in Paris, we met with no molestation, and were privately married in London, where we had decided to take up our abode. I afterwards learned that those of my teachers who had been parties to the plot were well paid for their services, while the only real sufferer was the principal of the establishment, who had been kept in total ignorance of the scheme, and whose dignified sense of propriety was shocked at having such a stigma affixed to her school. When my guardian returned he read me a lecture on my imprudence, and tried to satisfy his conscience for past neglect, by refusing to allow me more than a mere maintenance until I should attain my majority. To this, however, I refused submission, and the matter was finally compromised in a manner quite satisfactory to both parties. Mr. Wallingford immediately engaged elegant lodgings, and we commenced living in a style better suited to my future fortune than to my actual income. “My heart sickens when I look back to the weary years which succeeded my imprudent marriage. As time matured my judgment I was pained by the discovery of many weaknesses and faults in my husband, to which I would willingly have remained blind. Yet the discovery of these did not impair the simple, child-like affection with which I regarded the only being on earth to whom I was bound by any ties. I clung to him as the only one in the wide world whom I was permitted to love, and it required but little effort on his part to have strengthened my girlish fondness into the lasting fervor of womanly tenderness. While yet I remained in my minority Mr. Wallingford treated me with some show of consideration. Fitful gleams of kindness, transient visitings of former fondness, glimpses of the better nature which had been so perverted by evil habits, and endearments still bestowed in moments of persuasion, linked my heart to the ideal which I had enshrined in his image. But no sooner was I put in possession of my fortune than he threw off the mask entirely. I was too much in his power to render any further concealment necessary, and he now appeared before me in all the true deformity of his character. Dissipated in his habits, coarse in his feelings, low in his pursuits and pleasures, he had only sought me for the wealth which could minister to his depravity.