“I was not quite of legal age, and was left under the control of Madame, as you know, by our father’s will. She decided that I should spend at least a year abroad—you remember there was an excuse of financial business to be settled there also—and I had no power, and scarcely a wish, to oppose her. But the effect of this arrangement on Louisa astonished me. She was in absolute despair; the feelings, that, up to this time, had been implied rather than expressed, now broke all bounds. No argument of mine would reconcile her to a separation. She conjectured a thousand evils that would follow my absence. Her brother would take her away—she would be forced to give me up—to marry some other person utterly repugnant. “I was very young—you know, George—and to any man an attachment so earnest and passionate would have been gratifying. When argument and entreaties failed to convince her that an eternal separation was not threatened, I—rashly, madly—proposed a private marriage before my departure. She assented too readily, poor girl! Her guardian was away for a short visit out of town. There was no one but a housekeeper to control her movements. We stole out one evening and were married. The clergyman found witnesses, and I placed the certificate he gave us in my pocket-book. Neither of us thought how important it might become, and it was forgotten when we parted. “I dared not own my marriage, dependent, as I was, for every dollar I used upon my mother; and feeling that she would cast me out penniless, I could see no way but to leave my young wife where she was till my return. Soon after that I should be of age, and so far as property was concerned, independent to claim and protect my wife. “Our voyage was a protracted one, as you know. Accidents happened to my letters. It was months before I heard from my young wife. Her first letter was full of affection, the second struck me as saddened in its tone. They had been written months when I received them. Then followed complete silence. Up to this time my mother had lived very plainly indeed. I left her, as you will remember that I told you, in the poorest house on our father’s estate, but her method of existence had not sunk to its present level. When I came back she had taken up life in her present miserable abode. Catharine Lacy, so long a sunbeam in our house, had disappeared. Louisa! my wife! you know what my compassion drove her to—a pauper bed at Bellevue. The week I returned home, a package of letters that had followed me half over the continent, reached New York. They were from my wife, and told me her mournful story. Up to the very hour of her anguish she wrote every thought and feeling of her heart; poor, poor child, how she suffered; how she may yet be suffering!