"As they walked on he told her that he wanted to get away from England and see the world—the new world across the ocean. He had seen Europe summer after summer, traveling with his father and mother on the Continent. Now he wanted to see America; and asked her if she did not also.
"She told him that she wanted to see every place that he wanted to see, and to go everywhere he wanted to go, for that he was the only friend she had in all the wide world.
"So they walked on for about three hours, and then, about two o'clock in the morning, they reached the little railway station of Skelton. They had to wait two hours for the parliamentary train, which came heavily puffing in about five o'clock on that November morning.
"Young Whyte took second class tickets, and led his closely veiled companion to her seat on the train. And they moved off.
"They reached Glasgow about ten o'clock the next day, and found that there was a steamer bound for New York, to sail at noon. No time was to be lost, so they both went to the agency together, represented themselves as a newly married pair, and engaged the only stateroom to be procured—which happened to be in the second cabin. Their tickets were filled in with the names of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Whyte—which indeed constituted a legal marriage in Scotland, where a marriageable pair of lovers have only to declare themselves man and wife, in the presence of competent witnesses, to be as lawfully married as if the ceremony had been performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his own cathedral.
"They took possession of their stateroom on the Caledonian, which sailed at noon of the same day, and in due time arrived at New York.
"They spent two days at an uptown hotel, and then took the pretty cottage at Harlem, in which they lived for several months. Ann's boy-husband often told her that she grew prettier every day, and he seemed to grow fonder of her every day. He supplied her with a nicer outfit of clothing and more pocket money than she had ever had in her poverty-stricken life, and made her much happier every way than she had ever been before, as long as his money lasted.
"He had left England with nearly one hundred pounds in his pocket—the amount of his half-yearly allowance.
"On his arrival in New York, he had written to his father and confessed his marriage with his tutor's step-daughter and begged forgiveness and—remittances.
"Ann declined to write to her step-mother or the curate, declaring that she preferred that they should believe that she had been driven by their cruelty to bury herself in the quicksands, and that they should suffer all the remorse of conscience and reprobation of society that their conduct toward her deserved.