Should She Have Left Him?

# Should She Have Left Him?

A domestic melodrama by Barclay North (William C. Hudson), serialized from the 1894 Cassell edition and reissued by Street & Smith in 1900. The narrative opens at Saratoga during a musical evening where the recently married Mrs. Trescotte contemplates her contentment with her new husband while two men below discuss an extraordinary case: a man innocently married to two women, uncertain which wife is legitimate. The revelation deeply affects Mrs. Trescotte, who has herself married against her mother's wishes. Mrs. Courtenay, the society matriarch, demanded her daughter marry wealth; Trescotte, though descended from an old American family, lost his large inheritance when his father dissipated the estate into questionable securities, leaving him only eight thousand yearly. Despite her mother's insistence on a wealthy match with the German banker Waldemar, Dorothy married Trescotte for love and character. The novel explores the tension between aristocratic social obligation and individual choice, setting the stage for complications arising from the overheard conversation.