In the tableau of the marriage ceremony she had taken her position with reference to the locality of the box, and as near it as possible, and in the glare of the footlights the ring was clearly revealed.

Lifting his lorgnette, General Laurance inspected the white hand he had once kissed so rapturously, and by the aid of the lenses he recognized the costly ring, the valued heirloom, for the recovery of which he had offered five hundred dollars.  Had he still cherished a shadowy hope that Cuthbert was suffering from some fearful delusion, the sight of that singular and fatal ring utterly overthrew the last lingering vestige of doubt.  Stunned, miserable, dimly foreboding some overwhelming denouement, he sat in stony stillness, knowing that this was but the prelude to some dire catastrophe.

When the telegram, arrived and the young husband took his bride in his arms, the girlish face was lifted, and the passionate gleam of the dilating brown eyes sent a strange thrill to the hearts of both father and son.  Vowing to return very soon and claim her, the husband tore himself away, and as he vanished through a side door near the box, Minnie followed, stretched out her arms, and looking up full at its two tenants she breathed her wild passionate prayer which rang with indescribable pathos through that vast building: 

“My husband!  My husband—­do not forsake me!”

Cuthbert put his hand over his eyes, and but for the voices on the stage his shuddering groan would have been heard outside the box.  In the scene where Peleg’s advances were indignantly repulsed, and his threats to unleash the bloodhounds of slander, hunting her to infamy, were fully developed, Cuthbert seemed to rouse himself from his stupor and a different expression crossed his features.

Skilfully the part played by General Laurance in bribing Peleg, and returning the letters of the wretched wife, the disgraceful threats, the offers to buy up and cancel her conjugal claims, were all presented.

When the grandmother departed, and the child-wife secretly made her way to New York, seeking service that would secure her bread, and still hopeful of her husband’s return, Cuthbert grasped his father’s arm and hissed in his ear: 

“You deceived me!  You told me she went with that villain to California to hide her disgrace!”

Cowed and powerless, the old man sat, recognizing the faithful portraiture of his own dark schemes in those early days of the trouble, and growing numb with a vague prophetic dread that the foundations of the world were crumbling away.

His son suddenly drew his chair a little forward and sat down, his elbow on his knee, his head on his hand; his gaze fixed on the woman who had contrived to reproduce even the fall that caused her removal to the hospital.

The ensuing scene represented the young mother, sitting on a cot in the hospital, with a babe lying across her knees, and the storm of horror, hate, and defiance with which she spurned Peleg from her, calling on heaven to defend her and her baby, and denouncing the treachery of General Laurance who had bribed Peterson to insult and defame her.