cannot tell you how I loved Montague Kingdon. When I look back to that
time of my life, it seems like a picture standing out against a
background of darkness, with some strange vivid light shining upon it. It
was arranged between Montague and my sister that we should be married as
soon as his brother, Lord Durnsville, had paid his debts. The payment of
the debts was an old promise of Lord Durnsville's, and an imprudent
marriage on his brother's part might have prevented the performance of
it. This is what Montague told my sister Charlotte. She begged him to
confide in her husband, my kind brother-in-law, but this he refused to
do. There came a day very soon after this when James Halliday, my
brother-in-law, was told about Montague Kingdon's visits to the farm. He
came home and found Mr. Kingdon with us; and then there was a dreadful
scene between them. James forbade Mr. Kingdon ever again to set foot in
his house. He scolded my sister, he warned me. It was all no use. I loved
Montague Kingdon as you say you love me--foolishly, recklessly. I could
not disbelieve or doubt him. When he told me of his plans for our
marriage, which was to be kept secret until Lord Durnsville had paid his
debts, I consented to leave Newhall with him to be married in London. If
he had asked me for my life, I must have given it to him. And how should
I disbelieve his promises when I had lived only amongst people who were
truth itself? He knew that I had friends in London, and it was arranged
between us that I was to be married from the house of one of them, who
had been my girlish companion, and who was now well married. I was to
write, telling her of my intended journey to town; and on the following
night I was to leave Newhall secretly with Montague Kingdon. I was to
make my peace with my sister and her husband after my marriage. How shall
I tell you the rest? From the first to last he deceived me. The carriage
that was, as I believed, to have taken us to London, carried us to Hull.
From Hull we crossed to Hamburg. From that time my story is all shame and
misery. I think my heart broke in the hour in which I discovered that I