"Surely the saddest,
most pitiful story a young girl ever had to tell."
Then, in a panting voice, she told her horrified listeners all, from the
beginning to the very end, omitting not the slightest detail, dwelling
with a pathos that brought tears to every eye, of how she had loved him
up to the very hour he had come for her to elope with him; her horror
and fear of him growing more intense because of the marriage he forced
her into, with the concealed revolver pressed so close to her heart she
dared not disobey his slightest command.
And how the conviction grew upon her that he was marrying her for wealth
only, and the inspiration that came to her to test his so-called love by
telling him that she had been disinherited, though she was confident
that her father had made his will in her favor, leaving her his entire
fortune.
Dwelling with piteous sobs on how he had then and there struck her down
to death, as he supposed, and that he had made all haste to make away
with her; and that she would at that moment have been lying in an
unmarked grave, under the snowdrifts, if Heaven had not most
miraculously interfered and saved her.
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