Mystery fiction; Race relations -- Fiction; Southern States -- Fiction
"Then came the terrible misstep; he asked me to go with him and I
consented. We should have gone home; he was afraid of the legal effects
of marrying a minor, and so we went the other way. Not stopping in New
York we turned northward, away from the revengeful south; from police
surveillance, and somewhere we were married. I heard them call us man
and wife, and then I sank again into my dream.
"It does not seem possible that I could not have known the name of the
place, but I was no more than a child looking from a car window and
taken out for meals here and there. I had but one thought--my husband.
"We went to Canada, then abroad. Gaspard had saved considerable money;
his home was in Silesia and thither we went; and that long journey was
the happiest honeymoon a woman could know."
"I spent mine in Europe wandering from point to point. I understand,"
said Mrs. Montjoy, gently.
"Oh, you do understand! We reached the home and then my troubles began.
My husband, the restraints of his professional engagement thrown off,
fell a victim to dissipation again. He had left his country to break up
old associations and this habit.
"His people were high-class but poor. He was Count Levigne. Their pride
was boundless. They disliked me from the beginning. I had frustrated the
plans of the family, whose redemption was to come from Gaspard. Innocent
though I was, and soon demanding the tenderness, the love, the
gentleness which almost every woman receives under like circumstances, I
received only coldness and petty persecution.
"Soon came want; not the want of mere food, but of clothing and minor
comforts. And Gaspard had changed--he who should have defended me left
me to defend myself. One night came the end. He reproached me--he was
intoxicated--with having ruined his life and his prospects." The speaker
paused. With this scene had come an emotion she could with difficulty
control; but, calm at last, she continued with dignity:
"The daughter of Gen. Albert Evan could not stand that. I sold my
diamonds, my mother's diamonds, and came away. I had resolved to come
back and work for a living in my own land until peace could be made with
father. At that time I did not know the trouble. I found out, though.
"Gaspard came to his senses then and followed me. Madame, can you
imagine the sorrow of the coming back? But a few months before I had
gone over the same route the happiest woman in all the to me beautiful
world, and now I was the most miserable; life had lost its beauty!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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