LADY’S MATRIMONIAL QUEST.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3279, 26 July 1911, Page 3

LADY’S MATRIMONIAL QUEST.

AM INTERRUPTED COURTSHIP.

SEQUEL TO AN ADVERTISEMENT.

It was about six weeks ago that Mr Duncan Clerk sat outside on his farm one Saturday, at Tylden (Victoria) reading his newspaper. Things had gone well with him ; crops had been good; the cows had calved well, but, in spito of his growing farmyard, he felt lnoely. So it arose that his eyes yearningly scanned the matrimonial column, and he learnt that, pining in loneliness down in Melbourne there was a lady awaiting her affinity. Endowed with riches of land' and money, she yet needed someone to love and guard her. Somehow, so Mr Clerk told the detectives, he felt he was just, the man for the position. He went inside, composed a love letter, and himself dropped it, with a wish, into the country post office pillar. They met near “The Age” Office a few days later, and the courting began. She told him of her great loneliness, how she was a widow*—Mrs Isabelia Goodson —just come from Auckland. AA T liile they continued 1 their romance in a tea shop she showed him a New Zealand newspaper with beautiful illustrations of her Auckland estate and home. She murmured she was only a frail woman, and homes like those needed a man’s care. And somehow again lie felt that he was the man she was looking for. He told her of his farm away up at Tylden. of the cows and the calves, of the fowls and the hay, and forthwith she developed l a new longing for the country life she had' for the time forsaken in the quest for a man. They spent a day roving over the farm paddocks. He proudly exhibited his stock, and whispered of the little nest egg in the bank. She told him be was wonderful to do so much with so little. Her farms covered 2000 acres, and the neighbors were chasing with oifers of up to £7 per acre for it all. “AA bat,” she asked, “do you think of that?” His answer was, “Will you ne mv wife?” They named the day and made the arrangements. She told him of “a dying promise to her husband” that when she again riiarried the bridegroom must deposit £IOO as a guarantee of good faith. She knew it was silly, but still it was a promise, and she daren’t disobey. If he would give £3O she would make up the balance. Then she reverted to the 2000 acres, and casually mentioned a /rip to the Continent as a. post-nuptial incident of the near future —as soon as the marriage was over it should l take place, and she wondered who could be put to manage the farms. He murmured his willingness to put up the £3O. He, continuing, said he had a brother, and she was quite willing, for his sake, that his brother should be the manager It was a fine opening for a man, and of course it was only right that the brother should make a formal deposit of £SO as some sort of guarantee. ,

Alatters all in train for the honeymoon. Mr Clerk received on Saturday a letter from “his loving Belle” asking him to meet her at Spencer-street railway station on Monday night. They would sail this week for New Zealand and marry at Auckland. She would! receive his £3O now. and give him a cheque on an Auckland bank which, he could cash as soon as he landed. The farewells were said at Tylden, and stories were bruited abroad of the travels Mr Clerk was setting out upon. Some of his friends were doubting, and wrote to the Detective Office to. “keep an eye on Duncan.” So it was that Detectives Howard and Cantlon also met the train last night, and witnessed the coming together of the lovers, and the officers broke rudely into the telling of the “sweetest story. h At midnight last night Mrs Isabella Goodson was in the Detective Office telling another story ...altogether. She admitted all that- the bridegroom-elect had said, but said that she was not a widow after all. She gave the name of Mrs Isabella Bowman, and. said she had recently come from Adelaide. She had wanted money, and that w r as the reason she had advetriSed, and told the story she had spun to Clerk. She was charged with having endeavored to impose by false verbal representations unth a view to obtaining money, andl then she was locked up. “Here, I’m going to find a bed,” said Clerk, after he had told the above story of his courtship. “AVill. you fellows mind the £4O I brought for her?”