Justified

• 1909
• Drama, Other

The awakening to a broader understanding of one's life partner in marriage, after the primrose path of the honeymoon is left behind, and the more commonplace things in life are to be dealt with, is often a tragedy which harvests bitter tears and many vain regrets. The story of Mr. and Mrs. John Seymour is the old, old story of love lost after marriage. In the closer intimacy which marriage offers. Mrs. Seymour finds in her husband anything but ideal characteristics which she imagined he possessed, and consequently ceases to love him. On the other hand, her husband, blind in his devotion, overlooks his wife's shortcomings. As is often the case in such a woeful one-sided love. Mrs. Seymour finds the company of other men more pleasant than that of her husband, and becomes infatuated with handsome John Hazleton, who, in turn, loves her passionately. Unbeknownst to her husband, Mrs. Seymour meets secretly with Hazleton, and in the end the misguided woman is persuaded to elope with Hazleton. Seymour has lately been suspicious of his wife's unfaithfulness to him, and upon the day Mrs. Seymour and Hazleton have chosen to leave the city together, he enters the house. Hazleton. who is in Mrs. Seymour's apartments, assisting her in her packing," and finding escape from the room cut off. hides himself in the woman's trunk just as Seymour enters the room. The woman offers no explanation of her excitement and flurry and accounts for the trunk and the litter of clothing about it in a feeble excuse that she had decided, to spend a few days at the seaside. Seymour's suspicions are verified when he observes on the table a lighted cigar. A movement from within the trunk satisfies him of the whereabouts of the intruder in love and home. Seymour plans revenge and adopts a unique and novel one. From a drawer in the writing table he draws a revolver, picks up a sheet of paper, and tearing a hole in the middle for a bull's-eye, requests his wife to place it on the trunk, that he is going to show her some expert marksmanship. The woman, horrified, refuses to do so. He forces the paper into her hand and compels her to place it upon the trunk. Calmly he raises the revolver and fires. A moment later a railroad ticket agent, accompanied by two baggage men, enters the room, in answer to Mrs. Seymour's summons. The trunk and its contents are carried out of the room and Mrs. Seymour given her ticket, while her husband expresses the hope that she "may have a pleasant stay at the seaside." The woman, dazed by the sudden and awful tragedy, stumbles room out of the room and Seymour drops into a chair, his face in his hands.