Lydia Wells—Crosbie Wells

Lydia Wells and Crosbie Wells’s marriage is defined less by a settled shared life than by secrecy, separation, and the claims others make upon their relationship. Crosbie’s intimacy with Anna Wetherell, Lydia’s response to it, and her concealed affair with Alistair Lauderback turn the marriage into both a private bond and a public liability. After Crosbie’s death, that history bears directly on Lydia’s claim to his inheritance and on how others judge her conduct.

Marriage and concealed histories

Crosbie’s letters to Alistair Lauderback establish that Crosbie had told Lydia about his illegitimate parentage. The detail matters because Lauderback was Crosbie’s illegitimate half-brother, a connection that carried acute private significance for him. During her affair with Lauderback, Lydia used her maiden name, Greenway, and Lauderback did not know she was married. He learned both that she was Lydia Wells and that she had a husband only after Francis Carver returned from gaol calling himself Francis Wells.

The revelation exposes an asymmetry between the two relationships. Crosbie had shared his family history with Lydia, while Lauderback had never answered Crosbie’s letters. Walter Moody reasons that Lydia therefore knew about the brothers’ connection and could have understood how painful it was to Lauderback. Moody suspects she may even have approached him in order to exploit that vulnerability, but the text presents this as Moody’s inference, not as a confirmed account of Lydia’s original intention. What is explicit is that the marriage’s concealed history became entangled with Lauderback’s shame and with Carver’s later use of the Wells name.

Anna Wetherell and the separation

The marriage’s consequences become especially clear through Anna Wetherell. Anna acknowledges that she slept with Lydia’s husband, Crosbie, and that she was carrying his child when Lydia sent her away to Hokitika. Lydia herself prompts Anna to identify the child’s father as Crosbie. The exchange makes the separation concrete: Lydia’s response to the affair was to remove Anna from her household while she was pregnant, rather than to leave the conflict unspoken.

In the later conversation, Lydia asks whether Anna still regards that response as right. Anna says she does not, and adds that Lydia has repented and asked her forgiveness more than once. This admission presents the past injury alongside evidence of attempted repair. It does not erase Lydia’s decision or the harm of the separation; instead, the two women acknowledge both the original act and Lydia’s subsequent efforts to make amends. Their exchange also answers a challenge to Lydia’s professed concern for others with a specific history of wrongdoing, regret, and forgiveness sought.

Public scandal and inheritance

After George Shepard’s letter to the editor of the West Coast Times precipitates a scandal, the affair between Lydia and Lauderback becomes public. The disclosure damages Lydia’s standing as Crosbie’s widow and weakens her claim to his inheritance: the revelation that she had made Crosbie a cuckold is part of the case against her. Lauderback’s full and frank public confession further changes the terms of the controversy. He apologizes to the voting public for concealing the affair, accepts responsibility for its consequences, and expresses regret that he arrived at Crosbie’s cottage half an hour too late to ask his forgiveness.

Lauderback’s confession draws sympathy and admiration from the public; some observers even suppose that his reputation has improved. Its effect is not equivalent to Lydia’s position. The same disclosure that allows Lauderback to present himself publicly as remorseful leaves Lydia’s marital conduct exposed in the dispute over Crosbie’s estate. Their affair thus becomes a public event with unequal consequences for the two people involved, while Crosbie’s death makes the absent husband the measure against which both are judged.

The marriage as a contested bond

Moody’s reconstruction connects Lydia’s knowledge of Crosbie’s past to the theft of Crosbie’s fortune. He concludes that the money used to blackmail Lauderback did not come from Carver’s own claim: Crosbie had made the Dunstan gold strike, and Lydia had betrayed the secret to Carver. In Moody’s account, Lydia and Carver then used that fortune in a scheme that also secured them the Godspeed and enabled them to blackmail Lauderback. These are conclusions Moody draws from the correspondence and the circumstances he has assembled; they show how the marriage’s private knowledge becomes part of a wider struggle over property and identity.

The relationship therefore has consequences beyond the question of whether Lydia was Crosbie’s wife or widow. Crosbie’s confidence in sharing his parentage with her, her involvement with Lauderback, her separation of Anna from Crosbie, and her later pursuit of forgiveness all describe different forms of intimacy and betrayal. After Crosbie’s death, the disputed inheritance turns these personal histories into public evidence. The marriage remains consequential precisely because its secrets do not stay within it: they shape the fortunes of Anna, Lauderback, and Lydia herself.