Rosa Blondelle

She had many suitors for her hand; but none found favor in her eyes but
Mr. Horace Blondelle, a very handsome and attractive young gentleman,
whose principal passport into good society seemed to be his distant
relationship to the Duke of Marchmonte. How he lived no one knew.
Where he lived everyone might see, for he always occupied the best
suits of apartments in the best hotel of any town or city in which he
might be for the time sojourning.

We, every one of us know, or know of, Mr. Horace Blondelle. There are
scores of him scattered about the great hotels of all the large cities
in Europe and America. But the simplest maiden or the silliest widow in
society, is seldom taken in by him.

There, however, at Scarborough, was an inexperienced poor little
creature from the Highlands, who had never in her life seen any one more
attractive than the red-headed heroes of her native hills, and who,
having aurific tresses of her own, was particularly prejudiced against
that splendid hue, and fatally ensnared by the raven ringlets and dark
eyes of this professional lady-killer.

And thus it followed of course, that this beast of prey devoured the
pretty little widow and all her substance with less hesitation or
remorse than a cobra might have felt in swallowing a canary bird.

So complete was her hallucination, so perfect her trust in him, that
she took no precaution of having any part of her property settled upon
herself; and, in marrying this man she gave him an absolute control over
her own fortune, and a dangerous, if limited, influence over that of her
infant son.