ucation. While very young, through the machinations
of her elders, she had been married to a man much older than
herself--rich, wilful and dissipated. The man's name was Lavine, but his
first name we do not know, so hidden were the times in a maze of
obscurity. The young wife very soon discovered the depravity of this man
whom she had vowed to love and obey; divorce was impossible; and rather
than endure a lifelong existence of legalized shame, she packed up her
scanty effects and sought to hide herself from society and kinsmen by
going to the West Indies.

There she hoped to find employment as a governess in the family of one of
the rich planters; or if this plan were not successful she would start a
school on her own account, and thus benefit her kind and make for herself
an honorable living. Arriving at the island of Nevis, she found that the
natives did not especially desire education, certainly not enough to pay
for it, and there was no family requiring a governess. But a certain
Scotch planter by the name of Hamilton, who was consulted, thought in time
that a school could be built up, and he offered to meet the expense of it
until such a time as it could be put on a paying basis. Unmarried women
who accept friendly loans from men stand in dangerous places. With all
good women, heart-whole gratitude and a friendship that seems unselfish
ripen easily into love. They did so here. Perhaps, in a warm, ardent
temperament, sore grief and biting disappointment and crouching want
obscure the judgment and give a show of reason to actions that a colder
intellect would disapprove.

On the frontiers of civilization man is greater than law--all ceremonies
are looked upon lightly. In a few months Mrs. Lavine was called by the
little world of Nevis, Mrs. Hamilton, and Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton regarded
themselves as man and wife.

The planter Hamilton was a hard-headed, busy individual, who was quite
unable to sympathize with his wife's finer aspirations. Her first husband
had been clever and dissipated; this one was worthy and dull. And thus
deprived of congenial friendships, without books or art or that social
home life which goes to make up a woman's world, and longing for the
safety of close sympathy and tender love, with no one on whom her
intellect could strike a spark, she keenly felt the bitterness of exile.

In a city where society ebbs and flows, an intellectual woman married to a
commerce-grubbing man is not especially