So complete was her hallucination, so perfect her trust in him, that
she took no precaution of having any part of her property settled upon
herself; and, in marrying this man she gave him an absolute control over
her own fortune, and a dangerous, if limited, influence over that of her
infant son.
This very imprudent marriage was followed by a few months of delusive
happiness on the part of the bride; for the little fair beauty adored
her dark-haired Apollo, who graciously accepted her adoration.
But then came satiety and weariness and inconstancy on the part of the
husband, who soon commenced the pleasing pastime of breaking the wife's
heart.
Yet still, for some little time longer, she, with a deplorable fatuity,
believed in and loved him. After he had squandered her own fortune on
gaming-tables and race-courses, he wished to get possession of the
fortune of her son. To do this he persuaded her to sell out certain
stock and entrust him with the proceeds, to be invested, as he convinced
her, in railway shares in America, that would pay at least two hundred
per cent. dividends, and in a few months double that money.
Acting as her son's guardian and trustee, acting also, as she thought,
in his best interests, the deluded mother did as her husband directed.
She sold out the stocks, and confided the proceeds to him.
Then it was that they made the voyage to America, ostensibly to purchase
the railway shares in question. His real motive in bringing her to this
country was, doubtless, to take her as far as possible from her native
place and her old acquaintances, so as to prosecute the more safely and
effectually his fraudulent designs.
How they had arrived at Norfolk and taken rooms at the Anchor, and how
he had robbed and deserted her there, has already been told.
Sybil Berners listened to this sad and revolting story of woman's
weakness and man's criminality with mingled emotions of pity and
indignation.
"Believe me," she said, tenderly taking the hand of the injured wife, "I
feel the deepest sympathy with your misfortunes. I will do everything in
my power to comfort and help you--not in words only, but in deeds; and I
only grieve, dear, that I cannot give you back your husband in his honor
and integrity as you once regarded him," added this loving and confiding
wife, to whom no misery seemed so great as that caused by the default
and desertion of a husband.
"Oh, do not name him to me!" burst forth in pain from the lips of Rosa
Blondelle; "oh, I hope, as long as I may live in this world, never to be
wounded by the sound of his base name, or blasted with the sight of his
false face again."