“Five years ago, when I was nineteen, I married a man who was twenty years my senior. I met him out west while I was visiting there. He was a miner then, not actively engaged in digging the gold out of mother earth, nor panning it, but he was on the ground and superintended the work. He was a handsome man, although bronzed by exposure to the sun and wind; a Yale graduate, and every inch a gentleman, although thoroughly a man of the world. To sentimental nineteen, he had all the qualifications of a god, and although he was not the only one in Colorado Springs who was attentive to me, he was the one altogether lovely in my eyes. To be Mrs. Chauncey M. Dare was the height of my girlish ambition, and I used to write my name ‘Lucile Dare’ just to see how it would look on paper, and all this was before he had asked me to take his name. “My auntie, who was a wealthy widow, thoroughly approved of him and thought him a most eligible parti. He was reputed wealthy and, as Auntie said, he was old enough to be staid in his ways. I am sure she had my best interests at heart, but it seems strange to me now that she did not realize that he was too many years my senior and also that she did not deem it necessary to look into his antecedents. But if she had, she might not have found out, and I suppose I should not have this story to tell, and perhaps, too, I should have always been a careless child, with no thought for the comfort and welfare of others. “Well, we were married on the fifteenth of October and took apartments at The Arlington, instead of going to housekeeping, because he said he did not expect to remain there long, and it was an easy matter to pack and leave the hotel. “It was his desire to go back to New York City and show his ‘girl bride,’ as he called me, to all his friends and have a taste of real life. “He met the highest ideal of all my girlish fancies, and was as tender a husband as he was a lover. “After we had been married six months he came home one night and said, ‘Hurrah, babe, we are going east in a fortnight, thank God, so get your duds packed and be ready.’ “I was glad to make the change, too, for youth loves a change, and I was delighted at the prospect of going to New York, for I had never been further east than Chicago. “We went at the end of the two weeks. I was received with open arms by all his friends in the east and I thought myself the happiest girl in the world, for he seemed so proud of me. I know now it was not the right kind of pride. He was not proud of me for my goodness and purity, it was rather the pride in the possession of some coveted article, for I was conceded to be beautiful then, and I suppose my figure was good. His was not a nature capable of appreciating nobility of character.