At last, in a moment of reckless passion, he consented to a private marriage only insisting on concealment of the same until he should give her permission to announce it.
A private marriage is but a compromise with virtue in every instance, but Elizabeth was young and inexperienced.
She trusted her lover implicitly, and although the affair was not as she in her girlish fancies desired, still it was a bondage of love and she would willingly have submitted to its chains until death if her lover had so commanded.
It was only the insurmountable difficulty of her condition that at last counteracted the mental and moral poison of his presence and broke completely the spell that his impassioned caresses had thrown so fatally about her.
When the truth burst upon her that concealment was no longer possible, she fled to his apartments and fell on her knees before him.
"Oh, Lawrie, Lawrie," she sobbed, "You must tell Grandma of our marriage, you must, or I am ruined!" and she wept as if her heart would break.
Then an awful fear seized upon her as she noticed the stern, defiant look that crept into his face at her words.
"Get up Lizzie" he answered, brutally. "You should have thought of this before. There," he exclaimed, throwing a paper at her feet, "there is your Marriage Certificate. It is false every word of it; our marriage was a mockery from beginning to end. Show the paper to your grandparents and clear yourself if you can,--I can do nothing for you."
White as death, Elizabeth staggered slowly to her feet, but no word escaped her lips.
For a moment man and woman looked into each other's eyes, then with a mocking smile Lawrence Maynard, her lover, her idol, her perjured husband, passed rapidly from the room.
Like one in a dream she bent and raised the paper from the ground, then with head erect and steady step she walked to her own small room and locking the door behind her, fell heavily upon the bed with the lying certificate clasped closely in her rigid hand. She awoke to the realization that he had wronged her, and before she could fairly endure that knowledge she realized that he had also deserted her, and from that time forth her misery was complete. Too proud to tell her weakness now in the hour of shame, she reasoned that death alone would erase the stain upon her character, and with this sole purpose forming in her half crazed brain she fled to the sluggish river and took the frightful plunge into its awful depths.