“I saw him enter the carriage and drive away, and thirteen years passed before I looked upon him again.  Of course the reported illness was a mere ruse to lull his apprehensions.  His father received him with a hurricane of reproaches, threats, maledictions.  He taunted, jeered him with having been hoodwinked, cajoled, outwitted by a ‘wily old washwoman,’ who had inveigled him into a disgraceful misalliance in order to betray him, to fasten upon and devour his wealth.  One letter only I received from Cuthbert, denouncing grandmother’s treachery, and announcing his father’s rage and threats to disinherit and disown him if he did not repudiate the marriage, which he stated was invalid on account of his son’s minority.  He wrote that he would be compelled for the present to accede to his father’s wishes, since for nearly two years at least he was wholly dependent on his bounty; but assured me that on the day when he could claim his inheritance from his mother he would acknowledge his marriage at all hazards, and proclaim me his wife.  That letter, the first and last I ever received from my husband, you can read at your leisure.  Three days after it was dated, he and his father sailed for Europe, and he has never returned to America.

“Although it was a cruel blow to all my brilliant anticipations, I did not even then dream of the fate designed for me.  I loved on, trusted on, hoped—­oh, how sanguinely!  My pride was piqued at General Laurance’s haughty, supercilious scorn of my birth and blood, and I determined to fit myself for the proud niche I would one day fill as Cuthbert’s wife.  My grandmother spoke French fluently, it was her vernacular; and my father had left some valuable and choice books.  To these I turned with avidity, prosecuting my studies with renewed zest.  About three months after my husband left me, Uncle Orme sent money to defray our expenses to California.  Grandmother who foreboded the future, told me I had been sacrificed, abandoned, repudiated, and urged me to accompany her.  In return, I indignantly refused, charging her with having fired the temple of my happiness, by the brand of her betrayal of the secret.  Recriminations followed, we parted in anger and she left me, to join Uncle Orme; but not before acquainting me with the startling fact that Peleg Peterson had declared his determination to annul the marriage by furnishing infamous testimony against my character.

“After her departure a man who acted as agent for General Laurance called to negotiate for a separation, advising me to make the best terms in my power, as it was useless for me to attempt to cope with General Laurance, who would mercilessly crush me if necessary, by the publication of disgraceful slanders which my ’old lover Peleg Peterson’ had sworn to prove in open court.  He offered me five thousand dollars and my passage to San Francisco, on condition of my renouncing all claim to the hand and name of Cuthbert Laurance.  My husband he assured me had