“The story she told was pitiful. She proved to be an American by birth, her father having been a well-known merchant of Chicago. While he lived, her home was one of luxury, but just as she was emerging into womanhood he died. It was at his funeral she met the man destined to be her ruin. How he came there she never knew; he was not a friend of her father’s. It is enough he was there, and saw her, and that in three weeks—don’t shudder, she was such a child—they were married. In twenty-four hours she knew what that word meant for her; it meant blows. Everett, I am telling no fanciful story. In twenty-four hours after that girl was married, her husband, coming drunk into the house, found her in his way, and knocked her down. It was but the beginning. Her father’s estate, on being settled up, proving to be less than expected, he carried her off to England, where he did not wait to be drunk in order to maltreat her. She was not free from his cruelty night or day. Before she was sixteen, she had run the whole gamut of human suffering; and that, not at the hands of a coarse, common ruffian, but from an elegant, handsome, luxury-loving gentleman, whose taste in dress was so nice he would sooner fling a garment of hers into the fire than see her go into company clad in a manner he did not consider becoming. She bore it till her child was born, then she fled. Two days after the little one saw the light, she rose from her bed and, taking her baby in her arms, ran out of the house. The few jewels she had put into her pocket supported her till she could set up a little shop. As for her husband, she neither saw him, nor heard from him, from the day she left him till about two weeks before Horatio Leavenworth first met her, when she learned from the papers that he was dead. She was, therefore, free; but though she loved Horatio Leavenworth with all her heart, she would not marry him. She felt herself forever stained and soiled by the one awful year of abuse and contamination. Nor could he persuade her. Not till the death of her child, a month or so after his proposal, did she consent to give him her hand and what remained of her unhappy life. He brought her to New York, surrounded her with luxury and every tender care, but the arrow had gone too deep; two years from the day her child breathed its last, she too died. It was the blow of his life to Horatio Leavenworth; he was never the same man again. Though Mary and Eleanore shortly after entered his home, he never recovered his old lightheartedness. Money became his idol, and the ambition to make and leave a great fortune behind him modified all his views of life. But one proof remained that he never forgot the wife of his youth, and that was, he could not bear to have the word ‘Englishman’ uttered in his hearing.”
Mr. Veeley paused, and I rose to go. “Do you remember how Mrs. Leavenworth looked?” I asked. “Could you describe her to me?”
He seemed a little astonished at my request, but immediately replied: “She was a very pale woman; not strictly beautiful, but of a contour and expression of great charm. Her hair was brown, her eyes gray—”
“And very wide apart?”
He nodded, looking still more astonished. “How came you to know? Have you seen her picture?”
I did not answer that question.
On my way downstairs, I bethought me of a letter which I had in my pocket for Mr. Veeley’s son Fred, and, knowing of no surer way of getting it to him that night than by leaving it on the library table, I stepped to the door of that room, which in this house was at the rear of the parlors, and receiving no reply to my knock, opened it and looked in.
The room was unlighted, but a cheerful fire was burning in the grate, and by its glow I espied a lady crouching on the hearth, whom at first glance I took for Mrs. Veeley. But, upon advancing and addressing her by that name, I saw my mistake; for the person before me not only refrained from replying, but, rising at the sound of my voice, revealed a form of such noble proportions that all possibility of its being that of the dainty little wife of my partner fled.
“I see I have made a mistake,” said I. “I beg your pardon”; and would have left the room, but something in the general attitude of the lady before me restrained me, and, believing it to be Mary Leavenworth, I inquired:
“Can it be this is Miss Leavenworth?”
The noble figure appeared to droop, the gently lifted head to fall, and for a moment I doubted if I had been correct in my supposition. Then form and head slowly erected themselves, a soft voice spoke, and I heard a low “yes,” and hurriedly advancing, confronted—not Mary, with her glancing, feverish gaze, and scarlet, trembling lips—but Eleanore, the woman whose faintest look had moved me from the first, the woman whose husband I believed myself to be even then pursuing to his doom!
The surprise was too great; I could neither sustain nor conceal it. Stumbling slowly back, I murmured something about having believed it to be her cousin; and then, conscious only of the one wish to fly a presence I dared not encounter in my present mood, turned, when her rich, heart-full voice
