“I shall be glad to know whatever you care to tell me,” said Beth, simply.

“I am the wife of a poor farmer,” began the woman, speaking softly and with some hesitation, but gaining strength as she proceeded.  “As a girl I was considered attractive, and my father was a man of great wealth and social standing.  We lived in Baltimore.  Then I fell in love with a young man who, after obtaining my promise to marry him, found some one he loved better and carelessly discarded me.  As I have said, I have a sensitive nature.  In my girlhood I was especially susceptible to any slight, and this young man’s heartless action made it impossible for me to remain at home and face the humiliation he had thrust upon me.  My father was a hard man, and demanded that I marry the man he had himself chosen; but I resented this command and ran away.  My mother had passed on long before, and there was nothing to keep me at home.  I came west and secured a position to teach school in this county, and for a time I was quite contented and succeeded in living down my disappointment.  I heard but once from my father.  He had married again and disinherited me.  He forbade me to ever communicate with him again.

“At that time Will Rogers was one of the most promising and manly of the country lads around here.  He was desperately in love with me, and at this period, when I seemed completely cut off from my old life and the future contained no promise, I thought it best to wear out the remainder of my existence in the seclusion of a farm-house.  I put all the past behind me, and told Will Rogers I would marry him and be a faithful wife; but that my heart was dead.  He accepted me on that condition, and it was not until after we were married some time that my husband realized how impossible it would ever be to arouse my affection.  Then he lost courage, and became careless and reckless.  When our child came—­our Lucy—­Will was devoted to her, and the baby wakened in me all the old passionate capacity to love.  Lucy drew Will and me a little closer together, but he never recovered his youthful ambition.  He was a disappointed man, and went from bad to worse.  I don’t say Will hasn’t always been tender and true to me, and absolutely devoted to Lucy.  But he lost all hope of being loved as he loved me, and the disappointment broke him down.  He became an old man early in life, and his lack of energy kept us very poor.  I used to take in sewing before the accident to my eyes, and that helped a good deal to pay expenses.  But now I am helpless, and my husband devotes all his time to me, although I beg him to work the farm and try to earn some money.

“I wouldn’t have minded the poverty; I wouldn’t mind being blind, even, if Lucy had been spared to me.  I have had to bear so much in my life that I could even bear my child’s death.  But to have her disappear and not know what has become of her—­whether she is living miserably or lying at the bottom of the river—­it is this that is driving me distracted.”