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This is almost invariably the case with ruffians of this class. We are furnished with numberless instances of this in the reports of assaults upon women heard in our public police-courts.

The injured woman almost always finds some excuse for her brutal husband, and it is likely enough that Mrs. Bristow would never have left her home, however badly she had been treated, had it not been through the instigation and by the advice of her friend Bessie Dalton.

Mrs. Bristow had seated herself in front of a little table—​pens, ink and paper were before her, the last-named being already blotted by her tears.

“What shall I say to him, Bessie?” enquired the wife of her friend.

“How should I know? If it were my case I would not trouble myself to write. Wish him good-bye and say you are going abroad, that’s the best thing to do.”

“Abroad?”

“Certainly. Don’t let him imagine you are going to remain in this country; say you are going abroad to seek your fortune in a strange land, that’s the way to put it.”