Cruel As The Grave

So complete was her hallucination, so perfect her trust in him, that

she took no precaution of having any part of her property settled upon

herself; and, in marrying this man she gave him an absolute control over

her own fortune, and a dangerous, if limited, influence over that of her

infant son.

This very imprudent marriage was followed by a few months of delusive

happiness on the part of the bride; for the little fair beauty adored

her dark-haired Apollo, who graciously accepted her adoration.

But then came satiety and weariness and inconstancy on the part of the

husband, who soon commenced the pleasing pastime of breaking the wife's

heart.

Yet still, for some little time longer, she, with a deplorable fatuity,

believed in and loved him. After he had squandered her own fortune on

gaming-tables and race-courses, he wished to get possession of the

fortune of her son. To do this he persuaded her to sell out certain

stock and entrust him with the proceeds, to be invested, as he convinced

her, in railway shares in America, that would pay at least two hundred

per cent. dividends, and in a few months double that money.

Acting as her son's guardian and trustee, acting also, as she thought,

in his best interests, the deluded mother did as her husband directed.

She sold out the stocks, and confided the proceeds to him.

Then it was that they made the voyage to America, ostensibly to purchase

the railway shares in question. His real motive in bringing her to this

country was, doubtless, to take her as far as possible from her native

place and her old acquaintances, so as to prosecute the more safely and

effectually his fraudulent designs.

How they had arrived at Norfolk and taken rooms at the Anchor, and how

he had robbed and deserted her there, has already been told.

Sybil Berners listened to this sad and revolting story of woman's

weakness and man's criminality with mingled emotions of pity and

indignation.

"Believe me," she said, tenderly taking the hand of the injured wife, "I

feel the deepest sympathy with your misfortunes. I will do everything in

my power to comfort and help you--not in words only, but in deeds; and I

only grieve, dear, that I cannot give you back your husband in his honor

and integrity as you once regarded him," added this loving and confiding

wife, to whom no misery seemed so great as that caused by the default

and desertion of a husband.

"Oh, do not name him to me!" burst forth in pain from the lips of Rosa

Blondelle; "oh, I hope, as long as I may live in this world, never to be

wounded by the sound of his base name, or blasted with the sight of his

false face again."