Should She Have Left Him? — page 128: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER VII. THE BISHOP TO THE RESCUE. Mrs. COURTENAY, much crestfallen, returned to New York. There was abroad such laxity of morals and loose disregard of obligations and honor, espe. cially duty to society, that she was quite disgusted. What was the world coming to, if legally wedded wives declined to insist upon residence with their _husbands, and laughed, as it were, at the superior advantages of society? Really, she would have to believe the statements of the vulgar dailies about the spread of socialistic, communistic, and anarchical ideas, which she had always supposed to be the mere vaporings of sensation mongers. After the expert- ence of the past two days she was ready to believe anything. Here was her own daughter flying in the face of all settled principles, and actually assert- ing that her first duty was to secure her own happi- .. Ness, regardless of all other things. And she was ' aided and abetted by Trescotte, whose breeding and traditions were no less immaculate. She might think that some dreadful heresy had crept into her own special order, and it alone, had she not found the same eccéntricity in a lower class. But disgusted as she was, and as well disappointed 115 COIN @ LOOO cS (GO)