e reason. She said I had failed in duty toward her in not
speaking frankly at first. We parted coolly. I had saved a little money
from my wages; and I did well enough while my savings lasted. When they
came to an end, I tried to get employment again, and I failed. My aunt
said, and said truly, that her husband's income was barely enough to
support his family: she could do nothing for me, and I could do nothing
for myself. I wrote to my aunt at Glasgow, and received no answer.
Starvation stared me in the face, when I saw in a newspaper an
advertisement addressed to me by Mr. Van Brandt. He implored me to write
to him; he declared that his life without me was too desolate to be
endured; he solemnly promised that there should be no interruption to my
tranquillity if I would return to him. If I had only had myself to think
of, I would have begged my bread in the streets rather than return to
him--'"

I interrupted the narrative at that point.

"What other person could she have had to think of?" I said.

"Is it possible, George," my mother rejoined, "that you have no
suspicion of what she was alluding to when she said those words?"

The question passed by me unheeded: my thoughts were dwelling bitterly
on Van Brandt and his advertisement. "She answered the advertisement, of
course?" I said.

"And she saw Mr. Van Brandt," my mother went on. "She gave me no
detailed account of the interview between them. 'He reminded me,' she
said, 'of what I knew to be true--that the woman who had entrapped him
into marrying her was an incurable drunkard, and that his ever living
with her again was out of the question. Still she was alive, and she had
a right to the name at least of his wife. I won't attempt to excuse my
returning to him, knowing the circumstances as I did. I will only say
that I could see no other choice before me, in my position at the time.
It is needless to trouble you with what I have suffered since, or to
speak of what I may suffer still. I am a lost woman. Be under no alarm,
madam, about your son. I shall remember proudly to the end of my life
that he once offered me the honor and the happiness of becoming his
wife; but I know what is due to him and to you. I have seen him for the
last time. The one thing that remains to be done is to satisfy him that
our marriage is impossible. You are a mother; you will understand why
I reveal the obstacle which stands between us--not to him, but to you.'
She rose saying those w