Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 12, March 22, 1884: A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and FiresideVarious
Science
Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 12, March 22, 1884: A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside
Various
Agriculture -- United States -- Periodicals; Farm life -- Periodicals; United States -- Rural conditions -- Periodicals
She opened her arms, as if to hug her vengeance to her heart, and looked
at me steadily with eyes that thrilled me with their lambent fire. No
wonder the wretched vagabond loved her! What a doom his selfishness and
his duplicity had invoked upon him! I believe if he could have seen her as
I saw her then, so different from and better than he knew her to be, he
would have gone mad on the spot. Poor Mrs. Dobb the first was indeed
avenged.
We sipped our chocolate and talked of other things, as if such a being as
Frank Dobb had never been. Her husband joined us and we made an evening of
it at the theatre. I knew from the way he looked at me, and from the
increased warmth of his manner, that he was conversant with his wife's
having made a confidant of me. But I do not think he knew how far her
confidence had gone. I have often wondered since if he knew how deep and
fierce the hatred she carried for his predecessor was. There are things
women will reveal to strangers which they will die rather than divulge to
those they love.
I saw them off to Europe, for they were going to establish themselves in
London, and I have never seen or directly heard from them since. But some
months after their departure I received a letter from Robinson, who has
been painting there ever since his picture made that great hit in the
Salon of '7--.
"I have odd news for you," he wrote. "You remember Frank Dobb, who
belonged to our old Pen and Pencil Club, and who ran away from that Cuban
wife of his just before I left home? Well, about a year ago I met him in
Fleet street, the shabbiest beggar you ever saw. He was quite tight and
smelled of gin across the street. He was taking a couple of drawings to a
penny dreadful office which he was making pictures for at ten shillings a
piece. I went to see him once, in the dismalest street back of Drury Lane.
He was doing some painting for a dealer, when he was sober enough, and of
all the holes you ever saw his was it. I soon had to sit down on him, for
he got into the habit of coming to see me and loafing around, making the
studio smell like a pub, till I would lend him five shillings to go away.
I heard nothing of him till the other day I came across an event which
this from the Telegraph will explain."
The following newspaper paragraph was appended:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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