Should She Have Left Him? — page 63: what you’re looking at

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

5° SHOULD SHE HAVE LEFT HIM? that though I fly from you as if there were con- tagion in your arms, that I shall be a subject of gossip and insolent sympathy, until the topic is for- gotten in the misfortune of somebody else; dis- cussed at teas, to which I am not invited, and dis- sected at dinners, where no plate is laid for me? Will it not be said that I could have done no less to save my respectability, by the very people who will be careful not to leave a card for me when they callupon mamma? Will not everybody in my world say that I must not expect to take my old place, but must withdraw from public sight and contact?” “Is not your view extreme?” protested the har- rowed Trescotte. ‘I think not,” she replied thoughtfully. ‘Was not that the fate of Mrs. Hughcombe, whose hus- band left her, for reasons no one yet knows? Was not Mrs. Edgebury sent to Coventry because her husband was killed in a quarrel with Col. Birney, which grew out of Mr. Edgebury’s charge that the Colonel was too marked in his attentions to his wife and had compromised her, although it was shown at the trial that Colonel Birney was merely seeking her good offices to bring about a reconcilia- tion between himself and his wife? Well, let us assume I have done what you suggest—what the world, my world, commands, will not the fate of these women be mine? Shall I not be what they are—women with a past?” Trescotte, heart torn by this implacable dissec. tion of her position, cried out: —, COMICMHOOOKS.CO