"NAN'S" REPENTANCE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 6 March 1914, Page 3

"NAN'S" REPENTANCE.

DISCOVERED HER MISTAKE

LONDON, January 28. ; ,

There is in Now Zealand to-day "a woman who did," and whoso repentance came too late. The story of her fall waa told beforo MrVTustico Bargrovo Deune in the Divorce Court a few days ago, whim Mr Tom Cooper Fletcher, a Sheffield veterinary- surgeon, applied for a divorce from his wife on the usual grounds. It appears that Mr Fletcher married the lady in 1891, and for some years the union proved quite happy and resulted in a daughter being born to them. That child is now a young woman of twenty-one. In 1904 Mry Fletcher was left a legacy, and soon after that event,, according to the husband's counsel, the relations between the couple beca.ino strained. The wifo took to drink, and later became far more familiar with her husband's groom, ono Henry Burton, than Mr Fletcher deemed desirable or proper. When he complained of her conduct in this particular, Mrs Fletcher's answer was to the effect that' she was quite old enough to know ■ what . «lic was doing and would do as she liked. Mr Fletcher discharpicd Burton in May, 1912, and subsequently Mra Fletcher left the.house..The husband instituted enquiries, and discovered that she and Burton had sailed for Wellington, New Zealand, having booked passages in the name of "Mr and Mrs Rogers." In October, 1913, petitioner received a letter from his> wife, dated August IGth, in which she wrote: — .

"Dear Toim,—lt is just a year ago since I left, and now I find out what .1 ought to have prized. Nobody will ever know the agiony I have suffered. If I only could blot it all out and make a fresh start. I do not begrudge anything I have done to help you in past years, and nothing can ever atone for what I have done now my mad, rash action. May 1 be able to see my child occasionally,, and write to her from time to time? I feel I have deeply wronged her, and made-; her young life full of shadow. I know T deaerve all I have suffered, and T must be brave through, it all, but I cannot describe to you th* dreadful sensation and utter collapse of mind and body when I lie and think of what I have done.— NAN,"

But Mrs Fletcher had gone too far for her husband to forgive his- erring wife, and the result of his petition for release from the matrimonial yoke waa that Mr Justice Bargrave Deanc granted him a decree nisi, with costs against and also made an order that respondent 'should pay a sum of £IOO towards the costs out of : her separate estate.