He Fell in Love with His Wife

Family fiction/314 pages

Alida Armstrong weds a man, Ostrom, only to find out that he is already married -- and a murderer. So she leaves him and eventually drifts to the poorhouse. James Holcroft, a farmer, comes there looking for a housekeeper. Alida refuses the position at first by pointing out that people will talk if two unmarried people of the opposite sex are living together (1916 was, after all, a quainter age). So he offers to marry her, purely as a business proposition. This she agrees to, and she winds up making his home such a pleasant place that he really does fall in love with her. But their happiness is disturbed by the arrival of Ostrom, who threatens to kill Holcroft when Alida refuses to run off with him. The two men battle it out on a cliff, and Holcroft throws Ostrom to his death.








Approved by Englishcology