"I had asked for a month's time to prepare my mind for my coming marriage. At the end of a week, however, Mr. Seabrook came to me and told me that imperative business called him away for an absence of several weeks, and that, in his judgment, the marriage ceremony should take place before he left. He should be away over the month I had stipulated for; and, in case of accident, I would have the protection of his name. My objections were soon overruled, and on the morning of his departure we were married—as I believed, legally and firmly bound—in the presence of my family of boarders, and two or three women, including Mrs. ——. He went away immediately, and I was left to my tumultuous thoughts."
"May I be permitted to know whether you loved him at all, at that time? It seems to me that you must have sometimes yearned for the ownership of some heart, and the strong tenderness of man's firmer nature."
Mrs. Greyfield looked at me with a curiously mixed expression, half of sarcastic pity, half of amused contempt. But the thought, whatever it was, went unspoken. She reflected a moment silently before she answered.
"I have told you that my heart remained unweaned from the memory of my dead husband. I told Mr. Seabrook the same. But I admired, respected and believed in him; he was agreeable to me, and had my confidence. There can be no doubt, but if he had been all that he seemed, I should have ended by loving him in a quiet and constant way. As it was, the shock I felt at the discovery of his perfidy was terrible.
"My ears were yet tingling with my new name, when, everybody having gone, I sat down with Benton on my lap to have the pleasure of the few natural tears that women are bound to shed over their relinquished freedom. I was very soon aroused by a knock at the door, which opened to admit an old acquaintance, then residing in Vancouver, and a former suitor of mine. Almost the first thing he said was, 'I hear you have been getting married?' 'Yes,' I said, trying to laugh off my embarrassment, 'I had to marry a man at last to get rid of them!'
"'You made a poor selection, then,' he returned, rather angrily.
"His anger roused mine, for his tone was, as I thought, insolent, 'Do you think I should have done better to have taken you?' I asked, scornfully.
"'You would at least have got a man that the law could give you,' he retorted, 'and not another woman's husband.'
"The charge seemed so enormous that I laughed in his face, attributing his conduct to jealous annoyance at my marriage. But something in his manner, in spite of our mutual excitement, unsettled my confidence. He was not inventing this story; he evidently believed it himself. 'For God's sake,' I entreated, 'if you have any proof of what you say, give it me at once!' And then he went on to tell me that on the occasion of Mr. Seabrook's late visit to Vancouver, he had been recognized by an emigrant out from Ohio, who met and talked with him at the Hudson's Bay store. That man had told him, my informant, that he was well acquainted with the family of Mr. Seabrook, and that his wife and several children were living when he left Ohio.
"'Can you bring this man to me?' I asked, trembling with horrible apprehensions.