Northern Ohio journal. [volume] (Painesville, Ohio) 1872-1896, 1873-11-29

fortune-a hundred thousand dollars!
Think of that TO a woman without q dol
lar In the world. who ate the bread of de-
pendence, who bore on her shoulders
the dreadful heirloom of family gentility
and who was in the Market of Matri-
rnony. Think Of that!
Aunt Madge actually went into hys-
terics with delight, and Uncle Jacob for
got his growl for twenty-four hours.
1 think I was gladest OF all: for some
words of my friends farewell letter kept
ringing through the glad rumult of my
thoughts.
Take the money, dear child, and be as
happy with it as You can with it. 1t
comforts me to leave you this. You
earned it one night"
A week afterward Tom Darrow came
to see me. He had heard nothing of me
for years, and had been fancying all the
time had made "splendid match, :"
under my aunt's management, learning
his mistake only when he reached the
city.
He was gaining a wide practice out
west. He was little browner and
broader than when / had seen him last !;
yet he had the same manly, handsome
face, the same true ring of voice, the
same brave, generous soul had known
and loved.
1 thought it was singular that he
| should come to see me now, yet | met
him calmly enough and so we looked in
J each others faces.
"How is your wife ?'' asked, after a
| few minutes talk, and the word was
heavy in my heart. and hard on my
| lips.
Greatly" he said, with an amused
flash in his eyes, 'You know as much
about her as do!''
1 stared at him trying to gather his
meaning out of those ambiguous words
he had Just spoken.
81 should really like to know her
name if you will be so good as to tell
me-" he adced.
""What do you mean, ,::Tom ?" asked,
forgetting to give him his title.
| 81 mean that my wife is an entirely
mythical person to me. Whom did you
think she WASP"
.Bessie Gaylord-Bessie Gaylord" 1
muttered to myself two or three times
fancying must be dreaming.
| "Did you really think l had married
her, Honora Trvmbull?'
He stopped there-it was not in him to
speak disparagingly of any woman.
Ny gossipy school-mate had made a
grand mistake. Bessie Gaylord's hus-
band was quite another person. might
have learned the truth long before, only
1 never spoke Tom Darrow's name tc
living mortal.
There is little more to tell. What
ever there was to forgive on his part
Tom was ready enough to do it, indeed
he had done SO good while before
remembering" to quote his own words
"what Honora Trumbull had been." and
the meaning OF what seemed the pride
and scorn with which had refused
him growing clearer to him.
A year OF waiting for my friends
sake, and then was DIR. Darrow's deal
wife.
/ Now 1 have finished my story, il
seems hardly worth the telling, and ye
how awfully real the living was to me.
i Talk of a woman's marrying for mon
ey, blame her for it If you can. I, hav
ing been through those mills and know.
ing the sharpness of poverty and thu
bitterness of dependence. 1, sitting TO-
day under the vine and fig tree, nursed
by tender and cherishing love. and look
ing across the years and seeing higl
walls of the fate which once hedged mi
; about, pity with the unutterable pity o
one who knows, the women who are nov
in the MARKET OF MATRIMONEY