The Case for the Crown by Fred M. White — Read

Cecil drew a long breath of relief. She was feeling like a swimmer who has taken his life in his hands and has plunged into an unknown sea of difficulties and dangers; anything to get away from the peril behind. Outside it was so sweet and wholesome after the trying atmosphere of the house and the horror that faced her day and night that, for the moment, she could think of nothing else. From a puritanical point of view she was doing a wrong thing, and yet her heart did not reproach her or conscience whisper, for there was no guile in her, and, after all, she was doing no more than seeing the man she loved for the last time.

She had never disguised from her husband the fact that as long as she could recollect she had loved Godfrey Coventry. They had been brought up together, they had lived almost side by side until Robert Molyneux had come along with that masterful way of his and swept all opposition aside and robbed Coventry of his promised wife. Coventry was a poor man, and his prospects none of the best, and Cecil's dead father had been in needy, not to say desperate, circumstances. It was the pressure at home that had finally forced Cecil to defy the dictates of her own heart, and embark on a sea of trouble and misery with her eyes wide open. True, her father's good name had been saved, true he had died honoured and respected, but this had only added to Cecil's humiliation.