“I was called very pretty, and I kept company with some very gay young girls in my own class of life. We delighted in dressing in our best and promenading on Pennsylvania avenue, where we were guilty of flirting in a way that makes me bitterly ashamed now, for I realize too late that no pure young girl who respects herself should stoop to court attention and admiration from strangers. But I was giddy and thoughtless, my companions the same, and thus I made the acquaintance of the man who wrecked my life. He was handsome, as you know, and a few chance meetings and stolen glances completed the conquest of my silly heart. I permitted him to call on me at my home, and he told me that he lived in Chicago, and if I made a visit to the great World’s Fair he would be pleased to escort me through its wonders. He would return home in a week and ardently wished I were going then, so that he might have the pleasure of my company. “To hasten over this unpleasant story, I begged my parents to take me to the great fair, but they refused to do so, and desired me to put the notion out of my head. They also disapproved of my fine new lover, and bade me drop his acquaintance. “Smarting with resentment, I told Harold everything. A few secret meetings followed, then he persuaded me to elope with him. I agreed, and we were married, as I thought, by a Methodist minister and left for Chicago. “Violet, I believe, before Heaven, that he loved me at first as much as it is possible for such a nature to love. He gave me one week of the wildest happiness. Some days we attended the Fair, on others we visited the sights of the great city. He often called me wife, and the servants in the hotel called me Mrs. Stanley, for that was the name I knew him by at first. But as the days went by he seemed to weary of me. He indulged in drink, and became coarse and brutal, declaring that he had acted hastily in bringing me away with him. At last--why need I linger over it?--he told me to go, that I was not his wife--never had been! When I came to myself, having fallen in a faint at his cruel words, I found myself deserted, with a purse of gold by my side, and a curt note bidding me return to my parents. “I retained my senses just long enough to have a telegram sent my father to come for me, then I collapsed, and brain fever set in. My father arrived, and from my raving gathered the terrible story of my deception and desertion by Stanley, as he called himself. “I shall never know how it all came about, perhaps, Violet, for it was a mystery from beginning to end; but while I still lay on my sick-bed, ill unto death, my poor father was found lifeless in a vile house in the city--murdered, with a knife thrust in the heart. No evidence was produced to prove who was his murderer, and to-day he lies in an unavenged grave--my poor, poor father, who was so fond of his little Lena.