Three weeks after this mock marriage, however, I told Margaret that I was going to travel about the State a while to sell my medicines, and that I might be absent for some time.  She made no objections, and as I was going with my own team she asked me to take some mantillas and a few other goods which were a little out of fashion, and see if I could not sell them for her.  To be sure I would, and we parted on the best of terms.

Behold rue now, not only a medical man and a marrying man, but also a man milliner.  When I could not dispose of my medicines, I tried mantillas, and in the course of my tour I sold the whole of Margaret’s wares, faithfully remitting to her the money for the same.  I think she would have put her whole stock of goods on me to work off in the same way; but I never gave her the opportunity to do so.

My journeying brought me at last to Montpelier where I proposed to stay awhile and see if I could establish a practice.  I had disposed of my millinery goods and had nothing to attend to but my medicines -alas that my professional acquirements as a marrying man should again have been called in requisition.  But it was to be.  It was my fate to fall into the hands of another milliner.

“Insatiate monster! would not one suffice?”

It seems not.  There was a milliner at Rutland whose family and, friends all believed to be my wife, though she knew she was not; and here in Montpelier, was ready waiting, like a spider for a fly, another milliner who was about to enmesh me in the matrimonial net.  I had not been in the place a week before I became acquainted with Eliza Gurnsey.  I could hardly help it, for she lived in the hotel where I stopped, and although she was full thirty-five years old, she was altogether the most attractive woman in the house.  She was agreeable, good-looking, intelligent, and what the vernacular calls “smart.”  At all events, she was much too smart for me, as I soon found out.

She had a considerable millinery establishment which she and her younger sister carried on, employing several women, and she was reputed to be well off.  Strange as it may seem in the light of after events, she actually belonged to the church and was a regular attendant at the services.  But no woman in town was more talked about, and precisely what sort of a woman she was may be estimated from the fact that I had known her but little more than a week, when she proposed that she, her sister and I should go to Saratoga together, and have a good time for a day or two.

I was fairly fascinated with the woman and I consented.  The younger sister was taken with us, I thought at first as a cover, I knew afterwards as a confederate, and Eliza paid all the bills, which were by no means small ones, of the entire trip.  We stopped in Saratoga at a hotel, which is now in very different hands, but which was then kept by proprietors who, in addition to a most excellent table and accommodations, afforded their guests the opportunity, if they desired it, of attending prayers every night and morning in one of the parlors.  This may have been the inducement which made Eliza insist upon going to this house, but I doubt it.