“It appears that when she was barely seventeen she was inveigled into a secret marriage with one of those foreign adventurers who swarm in every country, and who styled himself Comte Armand de la Tremouille.  He seems to have been a blackguard of unusually low pattern, for, after he had extracted from her some L200 of her pin money and a few diamond brooches, he left her one fine day with a laconic word to say that he was sailing for Europe by the Argentina, and would not be back for some time.  She was in love with the brute, poor young soul, for when, a week later, she read that the Argentina was wrecked, and presumably every soul on board had perished, she wept very many bitter tears over her early widowhood.

“Fortunately her father, a very wealthy pork-butcher of Chicago, had known nothing of his daughter’s culpable foolishness.  Four years later he took her to London, where she met Mr. Francis Morton and married him.  She led six or seven years of very happy married life when one day, like a thunderbolt from a clear, blue sky, she received a typewritten letter, signed ‘Armand de la Tremouille,’ full of protestations of undying love, telling a long and pathetic tale of years of suffering in a foreign land, whither he had drifted after having been rescued almost miraculously from the wreck of the Argentina, and where he never had been able to scrape a sufficient amount of money to pay for his passage home.  At last fate had favoured him.  He had, after many vicissitudes, found the whereabouts of his dear wife, and was now ready to forgive all that was past and take her to his loving arms once again.

“What followed was the usual course of events when there is a blackguard and a fool of a woman.  She was terrorised and did not dare to tell her husband for some time; she corresponded with the Comte de la Tremouille, begging him for her sake and in memory of the past not to attempt to see her.  She found him amenable to reason in the shape of several hundred pounds which passed through the Brighton post office into his hands.  At last one day, by accident, Mr. Morton came across one of the Comte de la Tremouille’s interesting letters.  She confessed everything, throwing herself upon her husband’s mercy.

“Now, Mr. Francis Morton was a business man, who viewed life practically and soberly.  He liked his wife, who kept him in luxury, and wished to keep her, whereas the Comte de la Tremouille seemed willing enough to give her up for a consideration.  Mrs. Morton, who had the sole and absolute control of her fortune, on the other hand, was willing enough to pay the price and hush up the scandal, which she believed—­since she was a bit of a fool—­would land her in prison for bigamy.  Mr. Francis Morton wrote to the Comte de la Tremouille that his wife was ready to pay him the sum of L10,000 which he demanded in payment for her absolute liberty and his own complete disappearance out of her life now and for ever.  The appointment was made, and Mr. Morton left his house at 9 a.m. on March 17th with the L10,000 in his pocket.