Should She Have Left Him? — page 260: what you’re looking at

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

254 SHOULD SHE HAVE LEFT HIM? The young matron read the letter a dozen times, glorying init. Then she did what few women have the fortitude to do with a love letter. When its words were burned into her memory she threw it into the fire and watched it turn into ashes. She thought a long time by the fre. At length, arising with the air of one who had reached conclusions and formed a plan, she sat herself at her writing table and wrote areply. She told him the truth ef ler failure to meet him; she expressed the assurances of her undying love in terms not less ardent than his own; she told him that she should put his affection to the test; that she was engaged upon a plan, the successful issue of which would leave her free to gratify his love and her own; she demanded that he should not write her for two months, but pledged herself to write by every mail; if, at the expiration of that time his love for her held, he was to come to her in New York; she charged him to destroy her letters as received, telling him that any accidental discovery of them might defeat her plan. Sealing her letter, she dressed, called her carriage, and driving to the office of Mr. Magrane, she asked him to begin proceedings for a divorce from her hus- band. To say that the lawyer was astonished would probably be to say too much, for lawyers in their experiences are not easily astonished, but he cer- tainly did marvel that the most brilliant match of the last season should have ended so sadly and so quickly. The proofs she submitted shocked his manhood and he accepted the retainer, Comicbooks.c©