This is a biographical book. When Marcus Luttrell made that fatal mistake of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure, things had not looked so badly with him. He had bought his partnership and had a little money in hand, and Olivia had had sufficient for her modest trousseau. How could either of them have suspected that the partnership was a deceit and a fraud—that old Dr. Slade had let Marcus in for a rotten concern—that no paying patients would crowd the small dining-room—and that two years of professional profits would be represented in shillings? Now and then when he was tired and discouraged Dr. Luttrell would accuse himself of rashness and folly in no measured terms.
