“Well, what?”
“Hadn’t I better write a letter to John, bidding him farewell for ever?”
Bessie shrugged her shoulders and smiled.
“It’s more than he deserves,” she said, “but as you wish it, do so.”
CHAPTER XIV.
THE FLIGHT—A CONFIDENTIAL FRIEND—THE ROLL OF NOTES.
Mrs. Bristow had screwed her courage up as best she could, but now that the time had arrived for her to leave her home she felt a pang shoot through her heart.
She pictured to herself her husband’s return home after his debauch, his awakening in the morning, and his bitter remorse. Dissolute, debased, and worthless fellow as he was, his ill-used and miserable wife had some compassion left for him, some latent love of which she found it difficult to dispossess herself.
This is almost invariably the case with ruffians of this class. We are furnished with numberless instances of this in the reports of assaults upon women heard in our public police-courts.
The injured woman almost always finds some excuse for her brutal husband, and it is likely enough that Mrs. Bristow would never have left her home, however badly she had been treated, had it not been through the instigation and by the advice of her friend Bessie Dalton.