Weary and exhausted after a tedious day’s shopping, she went at the appointed hour to the parlor of the hotel, and while waiting there, she heard her name called in the adjoining room. It was impossible for her not to hear, and there she sat, pale and excited, listening to a repetition of calumnies which political strife had magnified and promulgated. The bare truthful outlines of her early unfortunate marriage were given, but so interwoven with false misrepresentations, that she could hardly believe herself the subject of remark. All she did hear was never known, but on her death-bed she told the circumstance to her husband, and then he understood the cause of her violent attack. He had tried to keep every paragraph and abusive line out of her sight, and hoped that now, after the election was decided, this unhappy subject of “her marriage before a divorce was granted,” would be dropped forever. She had acted as she thought was the best, and indeed in every act of her life she discovered the fine sense she displayed in her conduct towards her first husband. But the malicious envy of people who could not bear her elevation, caught at every straw to revile her pure and blameless life. Had she lived unhappily with General Jackson, there might have been some excuse for considering her a weak woman; but her long, happy and beautiful existence as his wife, was a convincing proof of her affectionate nature, and religious, high-minded soul. The fatal error of her youth, in marrying a man her intellectual and moral inferior, was more than atoned for in the miserable years she spent as his unappreciated wife. She was sensitive and refined, and her nature revolted at his coarseness. She had acted rashly in marrying him, but she was loth to part with him. Was she to blame that she did not know his character thoroughly before her marriage? The sigh that heaves from the hearts of thousands of women as they recall a similar experience, attests her innocence. Was she to blame for marrying again, when she and every one who knew her believed her free? He had never provided a home for her, she had always been compelled to live either with her mother or his, thereby sealing her doom, for no wife, however kind her husband may be, can be as happy in the home of her parents as she could in one of her own, be it ever so lowly. Captain Robards never tried to make her comfortable or contented, but augmented the sorrows of her young heart by a course of conduct revolting in even the most degraded of men, and inexcusable in him, since he was of a respectable family, and supposed to be somewhat cultivated.