le of me.
Is it not the case that you were content when you knew only what
was to be learned in those days of our sweet intimacy, but that
you have been made discontented by stories told you by your
partners at San Francisco? If this be so, trouble yourself at any
rate to find out the truth before you allow yourself to treat a
woman as you propose to treat me. I think you are too good a man
to cast aside a woman you have loved,--like a soiled glove,--
because ill-natured words have been spoken of her by men, or
perhaps by women, who know nothing of her life. My late husband,
Caradoc Hurtle, was Attorney-General in the State of Kansas when I
married him, I being then in possession of a considerable fortune
left to me by my mother. There his life was infamously bad. He
spent what money he could get of mine, and then left me and the
State, and took himself to Texas;--where he drank himself to
death. I did not follow him, and in his absence I was divorced
from him in accordance with the laws of Kansas State. I then went
to San Francisco about property of my mother's, which my husband
had fraudulently sold to a countryman of ours now resident in
Paris,--having forged my name. There I met you, and in that short
story I tell you all that there is to be told. It may be that you
do not believe me now; but if so, are you not bound to go where
you can verify your own doubts or my word?

I try to write dispassionately, but I am in truth overborne by
passion. I also have heard in California rumours about myself, and
after much delay I received your letter. I resolved to follow you
to England as soon as circumstances would permit me. I have been
forced to fight a battle about my property, and I have won it. I
had two reasons for carrying this through by my personal efforts
before I saw you. I had begun it and had determined that I would
not be beaten by fraud. And I was also determined that I would not
plead to you as a pauper. We have talked too freely together in
past days of our mutual money matters for me to feel any delicacy
in alluding to them. When a man and woman have agreed to be
husband and wife there should be no delicacy of that kind. When we
came here together we were both embarrassed. We both had some
property, but neither of us could enjoy it. Since that I have made
my way through my difficulties. From what I