Should She Have Left Him? — page 132: what you’re looking at

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

126 SHOULD SHE HAVE LEFT HIM? Adams; and (the lawyer was cautious of statement here) doubtless the lady had quite as much dislike for scandal as Mrs. Courtenay, and such a suit must inevitably bring out the incident of the five months with Trescotte. Of course Adams could bring a suit, but to what end? To establish the validity of a marriage, which, as it stood now, to him was inva- lid, and re-impose obligations which he had shuffled off r Looking at the matter from every side, and believing that there was, in fact, a common law marriage between Adams and Miss Hallock, Mr. Magrane was of the opinion that the best thing to do was to do nothing. It was true that in the beginning Mr. Magrane had advised Mrs. Trescotte to leave her husband, but that was before this phase of the situation had been presented. Upon consideration, he now believed that Mrs. Trescotte was legally married, and he would advise that she remain with her hus- band. Of course, this advice was based upon the assumption of the validity of the common law mar- riage, which the more he thought of it, the more he was inclined to believe was valid. If anyone wanted to dispute the verity of the assumption, then let that disputatious person undertake by legal process to prove its falsity and thereby play their game, but until someone did, Mr. and Mrs. Trescotte were justified in acting on the assumption. It now - seemed to him that Mrs. Trescotte’s instincts had been true from the beginning, and that her position was Comicboolkk<s C@ 5}