Then one day I saw him again. He passed me in the street.
The man I had seen honoured, féted, and acclaimed had come to the point at which he shunned his friends. I would have stopped and spoken, but he hurried past me.
Three weeks later I heard of his death. He had died penniless. He had known the torture of penury for years.
And "her ladyship," broken-hearted, tortured by the memory of the past magnificence, had eaten her heart out in sorrow by the side of the man she loved.
I had seen their gorgeous carriage pass with its mounted escort through acclaiming crowds. Husband and wife died tragically. The daughter who used to be fetched from school by the family footman died not long ago of starvation in circumstances of the most intense pathos.
About this romance of poverty there was, alas! the grim note of a poignant realism. But it was a mystery that only the tragedy of its victims' deaths revealed.
CHAPTER XV—THE GARDEN OF GUILT
Slums in the gilded West—"It's the place! It's ruin to us all"—Where the children earn and the mothers drink—How the "till sneak" works—Lynch law in London—A slump depression in the burglary trade