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.”
Sybil Berners shrank in dismay from the excited woman, who continued, vehemently:
“Do you wonder at this? I tell you, madam, it is possible for love to die a sudden and violent death, for mine has done so within the last three days.”