The Illegal Marriage — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

68 THE ILLEGAL MARRIAGE, my death you shall have alittle wife and all my property.’ “The poor old man wept bitterly, as if I had been his own son. I wrote to him often, but never for money. On my return he tried to scold me for this, and showed mea bill of exchange for a large sum, which he kept ready by him to send to me. Trippe, Iam almost afraid to tell you the amount—it was for five thousand dollars. This will show you how much he loved me. He insisted upon my taking the money then, but I declined, and until I came into all of this property here, he was trying to press money upon me. “Do you wonder that I loved him, Trippe? Do you wonder that I curse myself for having blasted his hopes? I am a coward before him, and even now—although I feel mean in doing it—I try to keep up his delusion. It would kill him to tell him the truth. “A few words more and I have done. You saw what a beautiful girl she was when she returned with my mother? How could I see her without loving her. “T did love her, fondly. I soon found that I could not meet her daily as I then did; I could not trust myself. Trippe, the temptation was too great. I could not offer her my hand; and I could not ad- mit even the possibility of winning her love. I don’t know that she would have cared for me; but J could not run the risk. I treated her coldly. Trippe, it nearly broke my heart to do so; but I did —I did. “My friend, you have my secret now. All hope is gone. Life has lost its pleasures to me, and I must live here, a lonely man, and see her married to GComicbooks €O