“For I shall want to forget all that sad past after the last day of this life, for tomorrow, I trust, a new era shall have dawned for me,” she said, when she gave me her promise.
When I heard her singing I wondered if she longed, yet feared, the new life, and if she wished to hold the day yet a little longer, which she had evidently given over to reminiscences, for I knew the past held some sweet memories, for every past has them, no matter how bitter it has been. And those sweet memories seem the brighter for their setting of darkness.
“I have been thinking of my past life all day,” she said, after we were seated, “and you know when one indulges in such a review a thousand things recur to one’s mind which are really irrelevant to the real story, yet they all combine to make up one’s life, and may have some bearing on the case after all.”
She was silent a long time, looking out into the twilight with unseeing eyes.
“You know I was accused of murder,” she said, abruptly. “I was tried and acquitted owing to insufficient evidence.”
“Yes, I remember something about it.”
“Five years ago, when I was nineteen, I married a man who was twenty years my senior. I met him out west while I was visiting there. He was a miner then, not actively engaged in digging the gold out of mother earth, nor panning it, but he was on the ground and superintended the work. He was a handsome man, although bronzed by exposure to the sun and wind; a Yale graduate, and every inch a gentleman, although thoroughly a man of the world. To sentimental nineteen, he had all the qualifications of a god, and although he was not the only one in Colorado Springs who was attentive to me, he was the one altogether lovely in my eyes. To be Mrs. Chauncey M. Dare was the height of my girlish ambition, and I used to write my name ‘Lucile Dare’ just to see how it would look on paper, and all this was before he had asked me to take his name.
“My auntie, who was a wealthy widow, thoroughly approved of him and thought him a most eligible parti. He was reputed wealthy and, as Auntie said, he was old enough to be staid in his ways. I am sure she had my best interests at heart, but it seems strange to me now that she did not realize that he was too many years my senior and also that she did not deem it necessary to look into his antecedents. But if she had, she might not have found out, and I suppose I should not have this story to tell, and perhaps, too, I should have always been a careless child, with no thought for the comfort and welfare of others.
“Well, we were married on the fifteenth of October and took apartments at The Arlington, instead of going to housekeeping, because he said he did not expect to remain there long, and it was an easy matter to pack and leave the hotel.