Not Pretty, but Precious by Unknown
page 200 of 318 (62%)
page 200 of 318 (62%)
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consoled, and Mrs. Rutherford's sad fate was forgotten.
Only two persons--Horace Rutherford and his mother--suspected that her death was not an accidental one; but they guarded their secret carefully, and Clement Rutherford will never learn that his dead wife was other than the innocent English girl she represented herself to be. Walter Nugent wrote a pathetic letter to Mrs. Rutherford, begging that a lock of his lost and now forgiven darling's hair might be sent to him; and it cost Horace a sharp pang of regret when he substituted for the black, wavy tress furnished by Clement a golden ringlet purchased from one of the leading hairdressers of New York. "Heaven forgive me!" he said to himself, remorsefully, as he sealed the little packet; "but I really think that this is one of the cases wherein one cannot be blamed for not revealing the truth." A few months later, Horace Rutherford stood in Greenwood Cemetery contemplating with curiosity and interest the inscription on a recently-erected monument of pure white marble. "Sacred to the memory of Marion Nugent, beloved wife of Clement Rutherford," he read. "Well, this is consistent at least. She wears the disguise of a virtuous woman in her very tomb. Marion Nugent rests beneath the waves of the Atlantic ocean, and here Rose Sherbrooke sleeps in an honored grave beneath the shelter of the dead girl's stainless name. But the deception has power to harm no longer, so let us leave her in peace. It is well for our family that, even as a sunken wreck, we still find this pirate bark Under False Colors," LUCY HAMILTON HOOPER. |
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