The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (10.1896)

Lucretia

By K. Douglas King

I

IN his life John Burnett suffered no distinction in any circles
beyond that immediate one of his acquaintances and friends. He
was an insignificant man in appearance, in moral force, in intellect,
and in rank—which was that of a navvy. Such fame as was his-
in Eastown-by-Line (the mushroom town wherein he lived, and
on whose railroads he worked) came solely through his domestic
troubles. Naturally, the source of these troubles was a woman ;
his wife, Lucretia—Luce, for short.

So far as looks went there could not have been a worse assorted
couple than the navvy and his wife. Luce was a splendidly
formed woman, with straight features, level brows, and a
penetrating way of looking out of a pair of very handsome eyes y
but with a screw loose somewhere in the complex machinery of
her moral being. This was the reason why her mouth, which
should have been large and generous, to match her eyes, was
curved to a foolish, little droop, at the corners ; and why her lips,
when they were not giving vent to absurd and impossible
aspirations, were pursed up in a thin martyr-shape.

She had a twin sister, who hardly belongs to this story, but

who-