Then he plunged to the heart of the matter, as though in haste to exculpate himself.
"I never meant that it should happen as it did.

I knew her in New York when we were both students there.

My father had been ill a long time; he was bent upon my marrying the daughter of his old friend Singleton, a man of wealth and influence in our part of the state.

I persuaded your mother to run away and we were married, under an assumed name,--but it was a marriage good in law.

There's no question of that, you understand.
Then I left her up there in the Adirondacks, and went home.