The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1911-03-09

The Last Straw.
There is nothing to remember in me,
Nothing | ever said with a grace,
Nothing | did that you care to see,
Nothing was that deserves a place
In your mind, now l leave you, set
you free"
James Lees Wife.
Things at Barrow End had been 60
ing from bad to worse.
In the early days of his marriage,
Dan had made an honest effort to
reform. His passion for the woman
whom he had made his wife was gen.
uine and deep. He had married her
blindly, deliberately shutting his eyes
to her tecedents-asking no ques-
tions, accepting anything she chose 10
tell him. They had met at small
private hotel, at which he was in the
habit of staying when in London. At
least, it called itself a private hotel,
but might have been more correctly
described as a boarding house. He
married her, lavished money upon her,
tried, as far as in him lay, to do and
be what she wished.
But the emptiness of her heart to-
wards him could not long be hid. Her
loneliness, her boredom, her disgust,
not to be disguised, at his manners
and habits-her more and more open
resorting to the company of other
men, soon had their inevitable effect
Passion of the kind felt by the wretch
ed man for her soon turns to kind
of hatred, when rebuffed.
Her power over him at the begin
ming was such that, had she one
ounce of affection for him-even one
ounce of devotion to duty-she might
have done what she pleased with him.
But the moment she began to neglect
him openly, her empire began to
crumble. At first it was easy to bring
him back to her feet a few caresses,
few smiles, and he begged her par
don, drove to Yeominster, and bought
her a necklace. But as his coarser
habits reasserted themselves, it grew
harder for her even to simulate af-
fection; and by degrees his control of
his violent temper weakened, and
there began to be scenes.
The wretched woman suffered all
the torment Of creature, naturally
refined, in the power of a ruffin. She
was beginning to think that she could
not endure it.
At first, the remodelling OF her
house, and the purchase OF second
hand furniture, had beguiled her
WEAKNESS. But of what use a house,
cleverly imbued with the right atmosr
phere, if the people who could appre-
ciate its effect never came near it?
or what use the carefully grotesque
guest-chamber, if the only guests were
horse-dealers?
She told herself that she might
have guessed it. But in her heart
she knew that she had not anticipated
anything as bad as the reality. For
years back she had been living apart
from the class to which she belonged.
The fact was stamped upon her ap-
perance and her manner All the kind
lier folk of the neighborhood would
have visited her, even though mar
ried to Dan Trent, had she been obvi-
ously gentlewoman-imp
though such a combination sounded.
But this was not so. Sophia Tarlton
had spoken the exact truth when she
called the lay "declasse."
When first he married, Dan had
spent his evenings at home. The con-
seriousness that his wife had far rather
that he did not soon sent him back
to the public-house, where he could
have his billiards and his betting. The
first time that he returned the worse
for drink and found his wife's door
locked, things had happened which,
Laura told herself, no woman could
be expected to endure.
Had Jem still been her admirer,
this would have been her opportunity.
He was the sort of man who would
have carried her off, and defied her
husband to do his worst. She well
knew that nothing of this kind could
be expected of Sir Miles, whose friend
ship she only retained at the cost of
making him sure that nothing but
friendship was expected of him.
There had come the time when she
actually had bruises to show as the re-
suit of Dams treatment of her. And
she felt that she had no remedy.
Separation-or even divorce, had
she grounds for it-what good would