There were secret meetings in the park. The poor, weak, deluded girl
could not resist the fascinations of the fine gentleman--who lured her
to destruction by means of lying promises. In due time you left Stukely
Park, unsuspected. Within a few days of your departure, the girl, Mary
Goodwin, disappeared.
"For six months nothing was heard of the missing Mary Goodwin; but at
the end of that time a gentleman, who remembered her in the days of her
beauty and innocence at Stukely Park, recognized the features of Miss
Stukely's _protegee_ in the face of a suicide, whose body was exhibited
in the Morgue at Paris. The girl had been found drowned. The Englishman
paid the charges of a decent funeral, and took back to the Stukelys the
intelligence of their _protegee's_ fate; but no one knew the secret of
her destruction. That secret was, however, suspected by Jane Stukely,
who broke her engagement with you on the strength of the dark
suspicion.
"It was to you she fled when she left Stukely Park--in your
companionship she went abroad, where she passed as your wife, you
assuming a false name--under which you were recognized, nevertheless.
The day came when you grew weary of your victim. When your funds were
exhausted, when the girl's tears and penitence grew troublesome--in the
hour when she was most helpless and miserable, and had most need of
your pity and protection, you abandoned her, leaving her alone in
Paris, with a few pounds to pay for her journey home, if she should
have courage to go back to the friends who had sheltered her.
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