Page:The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.djvu/231

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THE MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB.
227

friends, of course, thought that my loss amounted to no more than that of a mistress, and I soon began myself to doubt that I had ever been married, so far away and visionary did my life of the year previous seem. I continued my fast life for about six months, when suddenly I was arrested upon the brink of destruction by—an angel. I say this advisedly, for if ever there was an angel upon earth, it was she who afterwards became my wife. She was the daughter of a doctor, and it was her influence which drew me back from the dreary life of profligacy and dissipation which I was then leading. I paid her great attention, and we were, in fact, looked upon as good as engaged, but I knew that I was still linked to that accursed woman, and could not ask her to be my wife. At this second crisis of my life Fate again intervened, for I received a letter from England, which informed me that Rosanna Moore had been run over in the streets of London and had died in an hospital. The writer was a young doctor, who had attended her, and I wrote home to him, begging him to send out a certificate of her death, so that I might be sure she was no more. He did so, and also enclosed an account of the accident, which had appeared in a newspaper. Then, indeed, I felt that I was free, and closing, as I thought, forever the darkest page of my life's history, I began to look forward to the future. I married again, and my domestic life was a singularly happy one. As the colony grew greater, with every year I became even more wealthy than I had been, and was looked up to and respected by my fellow citizens. When my dear daughter Margaret was born, I felt that my cup of happiness was full, but suddenly I received a disagreeable reminder of the past. Rosanna's mother made her appearance one day—a disreputable-looking creature, smelling of gin, and in whom I could not recognize the respectably-dressed woman who used to accompany Rosanna to the theatre. She had spent long ago all the money I had given her, and sank lower and lower, until she now lived in a slum off Little Bourke Street. I made inquiries about the child, and she told me it was dead. Rosanna had not taken it to England with her, but had left it in her mother's charge, and, no doubt, neglect and want of proper nourishment was the cause of its death, There now seemed