They had not been started a year before the man returned, as usual
demanding more money. Michael, acting under Ellenby's guidance,
refused in terms that convinced his brother that the game of
bullying was up. He waited a while, and then wrote pathetically
that he was ill and starving. If only for the sake of his young
wife, would not Michael come and see them?
This was the first they had heard of his marriage. There was just a
faint hope that it might have effected a change, and Michael,
against Ellenby's advice, decided to go. In a miserable
lodging-house in the East End he found the young wife, but not his
brother, who did not return till he was on the point of leaving. In
the interval the girl seems to have confided her story to Michael.
She had been a singer, engaged at a music-hall in Rotterdam. There
Alex Hepworth, calling himself Charlie Martin, had met her and made
love to her. When he chose, he could be agreeable enough, and no
doubt her youth and beauty had given to his protestations, for the
time being, a genuine ring of admiration and desire. It was to
escape from her surroundings, more than anything else, that she had
consented. She was little more than a child, and anything seemed
preferable to the nightly horror to which her life exposed her.
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