Should She Have Left Him? — page 114: what you’re looking at

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

108 SHOULD SHE HAVE LEFT HIM? tress you, is by no means as bad as it will at first appear. You know that every cloud has a——” “Mrs, Courtenay, cried the poor littie distressed woman, “do have mercy and tell me what you mean!” Mrs. Courtenay, who thought she was approach- ing the subject with rare delicacy, was displeased that she should be hastened, and said abruptly: “Mr. Adams discovered some eight or nine months ago that the marriage of yourself to him was not valid—that the magistrate who performed the ceremony had no authority.” Mrs. Courtenay regretted her abruptness when she saw the young woman fall back in her chair. She thought that Mrs. Adams had fainted and she sprang up to call assistance, but the young woman by a plainly evident effort regained possession of herself and, rising from her seat, crossed the room and closed the doors. “T have had so much trouble in my short life—I have been so unhappy,’ she said plaintively, ‘“ that a little more cannot make much difference.” She came back to her chair and leaned on its back. “So | was not martied to Georec, after all snc mused, oblivious to the presence of the high-born dame of society, and the world, and the fashion. “I have always feared that it was so. It did not seem like a marriage ceremony. I have lived with him eight years, the mother of three children—a mother and yet not a wife!” Comicbooks.€© 3}