His Other Wife: A Novel — page 356: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

348 SENTENCED AND RECLAIMED. hath need of sober caution as to where he sets his ad- vancing foot. My-successes had brought me, perhaps, a few cold admirers, but no friends on whose adherence I could count ‘through good and evil report.’ I had com- mitted the unpardonable sin of acquiring fortune and popularity by my talent, despite the odium that attached to me as an interloper. And I crowned this offense by marrying a queen of society, and the heiress of one of the oldest names and wealthiest families in the South. ‘‘Was it for me, under these precarious circumstances, to incur a public scandal that would bring the blush of shame to my young bride’s cheek, and raise the howl of a prejudiced community against me, when, by secret con- cessions that would injure no one, but in reality benefit an innocent and beautiful young creature at the cost of a few paltry thousands subtracted from my honestly acquired fortune, I could avoid that expose? ‘Say, gentlemen, which of you would have hesitated to act as | acted, had you been placed as I was placed? Drop by drop I would have spilled my life-blood, rather than that the noble woman, whose honor and fair fame were mine to protect, should have suffered ome such pang as was threatened her young hfe by the malice or the madness of the woman calling herself Rachel Croft. ‘‘Which one of you, gentlemen of the jury, would have so far forgotten the duties of chivalry and the tenderness of manhood, as to let the heart of a nobly-born, delicately- . nurtured orphan girl, still mourning over the new-made GEomicbooks: (E(e) 3