Violations of conjugal faith are, unfortunately, not unknown, but in the majority of cases the intrigue progresses in secure secrecy until some wholly unforeseen accident brings it to sudden and relentless publicity. The recent case of a Brooklyn lady, who was carried into the city-hospital of that city about the beginning of last June, with both legs broken, illustrates this position with singular force and aptness. To quote from the article of the New York Sun of June 7, 1886:
"Mrs. Williams is young and pretty. 'She is not bad,' her melancholy husband said of her yesterday, 'only gay like.' She has been married about ten years, and two little children—a boy and a girl—are now longing for a mother's care and tenderness, which she cannot give them perhaps ever again. The faithful husband of the unfortunate woman is a hard-working man, honest if not dashing, devoted to his home, fond of his wife and proud of his children. 'I have been way down,' he says, 'but I am getting good wages now and getting on top again. But Lizzie wasn't content with these things. She was full of life, and I ought to have watched her long ago. Then this wouldn't have happened.'
"What has happened is this: When Lizzie went down on Fulton street on Saturday a week ago, ostensibly to make some purchases, she didn't return that night. Her husband's anxiety was increased when on Sunday he had no tidings of her. Day after day passed without word, and he sent for a young woman friend of Mrs. Williams to come in and look after the children and the household.
"On Thursday a young man from East New York, a friend of Mrs. Williams and a relative of a certain young lady friend of hers, stuck his head in the basement window of Fainter Williams' house and said:
"'Lizzy is in the City Hospital. She was hurt by a runaway, and both her legs are broken.'
"Mrs. Williams had first sent word to her East New York friend, who had thus taken the first tidings of his wayward wife to her anxious husband. Williams went at once to the hospital and found his Lizzie. She told him she had been driving with a friend in Fulton avenue and had been hurt.
"'Who was he?' Williams asked eagerly, the suspicions which he had been putting away from him for a long time suddenly becoming convictions.
"'None of your business,' said pretty Lizzie, defiantly. This reply was calculated to satisfy her husband that all was not right. In fact, it convinced him that everything was wrong, and in his excitement and pain he upbraided his wife with such vehemence that she called upon the hospital attendants to put him out of the ward unless he quieted down.
"Superintendent of Police Campbell heard of the alleged runaway in Fulton street, and he wanted to know why it had never been reported to him officially. He began an investigation and learned that the mishap had occurred out on the Coney Island boulevard. Mrs. Williams was confronted with this report. She denied its truth vehemently and protested 'before Almighty God' and in the presence of nurses and patients that she was run over and hurt in Fulton street. Nothing could move her from this statement, and when fifty witnesses to her accident sent word to the Police Superintendent of what they had seen, she was not discomfited, but repeated her false statements with determination.
"Mr. Williams says that his wife has for a long time nodded to sportive-looking men as they have passed his Bergen street house, and her absences from home have been irregular and sometimes prolonged indiscreetly into the evening. He has felt that her love of attention and social excitement was leading her beyond the bounds of propriety, but he had no doubt until now of her faithfulness to him and her children.