I could
not disbelieve or doubt him. When he told me of his plans for our
marriage, which was to be kept secret until Lord Durnsville had paid his
debts, I consented to leave Newhall with him to be married in London. If
he had asked me for my life, I must have given it to him. And how should
I disbelieve his promises when I had lived only amongst people who were
truth itself? He knew that I had friends in London, and it was arranged
between us that I was to be married from the house of one of them, who
had been my girlish companion, and who was now well married. I was to
write, telling her of my intended journey to town; and on the following
night I was to leave Newhall secretly with Montague Kingdon. I was to
make my peace with my sister and her husband after my marriage. How shall
I tell you the rest? From the first to last he deceived me. The carriage
that was, as I believed, to have taken us to London, carried us to Hull.
From Hull we crossed to Hamburg. From that time my story is all shame and
misery. I think my heart broke in the hour in which I discovered that I
had been cheated. I loved him, and clung to him long after I knew him to
be selfish and false and cruel. It seemed to be a part of my nature to
love him. My life was not the kind of life one reads of in novels. It was
no existence of splendour and luxury and riot, but one long struggle with
debt and difficulty.
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