"Ann cried more than ever for a few days, but then seemed to give up her lad for lost, and to resign herself to the 'inevitable.'
"She wrote to Mr. Alfred Whyte, Senior, but got no reply to her letter; again and again she wrote with no better success. The little balance of money left by her boy-husband was all gone. She began to sell off the trifles of jewelry that he had given her.
"One morning the letter carrier left a letter with a London postmark containing a bill of exchange for a hundred pounds, and not one word besides.
"Had it come from her boy-husband, or from his father? She could not tell.
"Well, to be brief, she never saw nor heard of him again. She lived comfortably with her motherly old servant, enjoyed life thoroughly and grew more beautiful every day, and this fool's paradise lasted as long as her money did. Before her last dollar was gone, she saw the advertisement in the _Pursuivant_ for a nursery governess, and answered it, as has been told.
"This, my dear Cora, is the substance of the story told me by Ann White on the day that I called on her in answer to her letter. What do you think of it?" inquired Mr. Fabian when he had finished his narrative.
"I think the cruel neglect of her step-parents and the sufferings of her childhood accountable for all her faults, and I feel very sorry for her, notwithstanding that she seems to be a very heartless animal," replied Corona.
"That is the secret of the wonderful preservation of her youth and beauty even up to this present time. Nothing wears a woman out as fast as her own heart."
"You engaged her as you promised to do, but why did you introduce her at Rockhold as a single girl, and why under an alias?" gravely inquired Corona.
"I introduced her as a single girl at her own request because of her extreme youth and her timidity. She naturally shrank from being known as a discarded wife or a doubtful widow. Besides, I never did say she was a single girl. I merely presented her as Rose Flowers, and left it to be inferred from her baby face that she was so."
"But why Rose Flowers when her name was Ann White?"
"What a cross-questioner you are, Corona! but I will answer you. Again it was by her own desire that I presented her as Rose Flowers, which was not an alias, as she explained to me, but a part of her true name. She had been baptized as Rose Anna Flowers, which was the maiden name of her grandmother, her father's mother."