‘I have little more to tell. He took the initiative, and left me with my child in furnished lodgings in a garrison town, where he had found profitable society among the officers of the regiment then quartered there, and had distinguished himself by his skill at billiards. He left me penniless, and at the mercy of the lodging-house-keeper, to whom he owed a heavy bill. I will not trouble you with the details of my life from this point. Happily for me, the woman was merciful. I freely surrendered the few trinkets I possessed, and she suffered me to depart unmolested with my own and my child’s small stock of clothes. I removed to humbler lodgings, gave lessons in music and singing, struggled on, paid my way, and after some time left the town with my child and came straight to London, glad to be lost in that ocean of humanity. I had heard before this of the death of both my parents—heard with a remorseful grief which I shall continue to suffer till my dying day: the sin of ingratitude such as mine entails a lifelong punishment. I was therefore quite alone in the world. I think if it had not been for my little girl I could hardly have survived so much misery, hardly have faced a future so hopeless. But that one tie bound me to life—that sweet companionship made sorrow endurable—lent a brightness even to my darkest days. I have no more to tell; God has been very good to me. All my efforts have prospered.’ ‘I know not how to thank you for this confidence,’ said Geoffrey, ‘for to my mind it removes every barrier between us, if you only can return, in some small measure, the love I have given you, and which must be yours till the end of my life.’ ‘You forget,’ she said sadly, ‘he who is in my estimation my husband still lives; or, at least, I have had no evidence of his death.’ ‘What! you would hold yourself bound by a tie which he told you was worthless?’ ‘I swore before God’s altar, in my father’s church, to cleave to him till death should part us. If he perjured himself, there is no reason why I should break my vow. I left him because to live with him was to participate in a life of fraud and dishonour, but I hold him not the less my husband. If you have any doubt of the story I have told you, the books of the registrar at Tyrrelhurst, in Hampshire, will confirm my story.’ ‘If I doubt you!’ cried Geoffrey. ‘I am as incapable of doubting you as you are of falsehood. But for Heaven’s sake abandon this idea of holding by a marriage which was from first to last a lie!’ Then followed passionate pleading, met by a resolution so calm, yet so inflexible, that in the end Geoffrey Hossack felt his prayers were idle, and farther persistence must needs degenerate into persecution. ‘Be it so!’ he exclaimed at last, angry and despairing; ‘you have been consistently cruel from the first. Why did you suffer me to love you, only to break my heart? Since it must be so, I bid you farewell, and leave you to the satisfaction of remaining true to a scoundrel.’