—Mrs. Browning.
In the early spring of 1896, the morning papers of Washington, and afterwards every journal of any consequence in the United States, one day contained the following news item under the glaring headlines:
SOCIETY BELLE ELOPES.
Vagaries of a Beauty.
The Daughter of a High Government Official in Washington, Chief of an Important Bureau.—The Handsomest Girl in Society.—A Charming Coquette, Who Has Refused Scores of Eligibles, Jilts a Distinguished Member of Congress on the Very Eve of Her Bridal for the Sake of a Poor Young Journalist, Rolfe Maxwell, Whom She Secretly Preferred.
Fashionable society, which expected to get on its best togs today for the grand noon wedding of Congressman Desha and the lovely Miss Viola Van Lew, will stand aghast at learning that the marriage is off.
The young beauty, assuming the prerogative of woman to change her mind, left her prospective bridegroom in the lurch last evening, and eloped with a poor young man not in her set.
The marriage ceremony was solemnized last night at the rectory of All Souls’ Church by the genial rector, from whom these facts were gleaned by our reporter. It is understood that the jilted bridegroom is désolé, and the astonished father furious and unforgiving, but as the eloping bride inherits on her marriage the fortune of her deceased mother, she can afford to snap her jeweled fingers in papa’s irate face.