Their association had assumed the character of one
of those belated intimacies, which sometimes spring up in the lives
of aged men and women when each wants companionship but has been
left companionless.
Time was when he could not have believed that any tie whatsoever
would ever exist between them. Her first husband had been his
first law partner; and from what he had been forced to observe
concerning his partner's fireside wretchedness during his few years
of married life, he had learned to fear and to hate her. With his
quick temper and honest way he made no pretence of hiding his
feeling--declined her invitations--cut her openly in society--and
said why. When his partner died, not killed indeed but
broken-spirited, he spoke his mind on the subject more publicly and
plainly still.
She brewed the poison of revenge and waited.
A year or two later when his engagement was announced her opportunity
came. In a single day it was done--so quietly, so perfectly, that
no one knew by whom. Scandal was set running--Scandal, which no
pursuing messengers of truth and justice can ever overtake and drag
backward along its path. His engagement was broken; she whom he was
to wed in time married one of his friends; and for years his own life
all but went to pieces.
Time is naught, existence a span. One evening when she was old
Mrs. Conyers, and he old Judge Morris, she sixty and he sixty-five,
they met at an evening party. In all those years he had never
spoken to her, nurturing his original dislike and rather suspecting
that it was she who had so ruined him.
Pages:
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64