It will be no breach of confidence to tell you the story, for I have her permission—withholding her name, of course.
It seems that the husband, in his youth, was rather "rapid"; and, in a most idiotic will, the father left him a large fortune, provided that before his twenty-fifth year he had been married to a woman at least ten years his senior. It was stipulated that the woman was not to know the conditions of the will until after the marriage, so that she might be some one of worth and character, capable of caring for the money.
No wonder it sobered the poor young man. He swore that he would never marry, and that those who were ready to grasp the fortune, should he fail to "keep the bond," might have it, and be—happy.
THE PINCIAN HILL, ROME
One vacation time found him at the home of a classmate in one of the eastern college towns, where he met and fell in love with this woman whom I have described to you. He had no idea she was older than himself until he had made her a proposal of marriage. She, of course, refused what she conceived to be a foolish boy's fancy. He sent for his mother, and together they set themselves to win the lady of his choice, after the mother had "looked her up"—and down—as mothers of precious boys are wont to do.
In the meantime the young man was taken very ill, in his delirium calling for his love, who finally, at the physician's urgent request, went to him, and, with his mother, cared for him.
It was the day before his twenty-fifth birthday. The mother was frantic at the thought that her son was to lose his fortune. He cared little for the money, save that it would enable him to shower favors upon this love of his. He begged her to marry him that night to save him from some great trouble—if she ever regretted it for one moment she should be free—that he could not in honor tell her why it was so necessary that the marriage be solemnized at once. She had grown fond of him, yet naturally hesitated to do either him or herself injustice. Finally his helplessness and his mother's agony proved too much for her, and just before the midnight they were married at his bedside.
Who can account for the vagaries of a woman's fancy? The foolish conditions which she made a part of this contract were: that they should live abroad where they were not known, and that she should be known as his mother.