Miserable, deservedly-miserable married pair.  The stolen fortune, on which they had counted, had slipped through their fingers.  The berths in the steamer for New York had been taken and paid for.  James had married a woman with nothing besides herself to bestow on him, except an incumbrance in the shape of a boy.

Late on the fatal wedding-day his first idea, when he was himself again after the discovery in the summer-house, was to get back his passage-money, to abandon his wife and his stepson, and to escape to America in a French steamer.  He went to the office of the English company, and offered the places which he had taken for sale.  The season of the year was against him; the passenger-traffic to America was at its lowest ebb, and profits depended upon freights alone.

If he still contemplated deserting his wife, he must also submit to sacrifice his money.  The other alternative was (as he expressed it himself) to “have his pennyworth for his penny, and to turn his family to good account in New York.”  He had not quite decided what to do when he got home again on the evening of his marriage.

At that critical moment in her life the bride was equal to the demand on her resources.

If she was foolish enough to allow James to act on his natural impulses, there were probably two prospects before her.  In one state of his temper, he might knock her down.  In another state of his temper, he might leave her behind him.  Her only hope of protecting herself, in either case, was to tame the bridegroom.  In his absence, she wisely armed herself with the most irresistible fascinations of her sex.  Never yet had he seen her dressed as she was dressed when he came home.  Never yet had her magnificent eyes looked at him as they looked now.  Emotions for which he was not prepared overcame this much injured man; he stared at the bride in helpless surprise.  That inestimable moment of weakness was all Mrs. Bellbridge asked for.  Bewildered by his own transformation, James found himself reading the newspaper the next morning sentimentally, with his arm round his wife’s waist.

By a refinement of cruelty, not one word had been said to prepare little Syd for the dreary change that was now close at hand in her young life.  The poor child had seen the preparations for departure, and had tried to imitate her mother in packing up.  She had collected her few morsels of darned and ragged clothing, and had gone upstairs to put them into one of the dilapidated old trunks in the garret play ground, when the servant was sent to bring her back to the sitting-room.  There, enthroned in an easy-chair, sat a strange lady; and there, hiding behind the chair in undisguised dislike of the visitor, was her little brother Roderick.  Syd looked timidly at her mother; and her mother said: 

“Here is your aunt.”