[CHAPTER XXII.]
"THAT WOMAN SHALL PAY DEARLY FOR THIS!"
From my hand I tore in anger
That dear pledge, the wedding ring—
Swore that I would learn to hate him,
But it is so weak a thing,
This poor woman's heart, that, beating
Heavily within my breast,
Aches with jealous grief and anger,
Tortured with a fierce unrest.
Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
Most bitter were the reflections of the elegant villain, Clifford Standish, during the long night in his prison-cell.
He knew too well that the charge against him was perfectly true, and that his boast to Geraldine that he would clear himself at court was absolutely false.
Two years before, he had secretly married a piquant variety actress, of whom he had soon wearied, but from whose fetters he could not get free.
Her life was absolutely irreproachable, and he could find no flaw in it on which to base an application for divorce.
And all of his flagrant violations of faith, although known too well to his wife, did not goad her to seek release from him.
She loved him, poor creature, with that dog-like devotion seen in some women of average intellect, who love the hand that smites them. She was romantic, and called it constancy; other women called it lack of spirit.