Crossword-Solution: CLINGER 7 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 10

Always gentle and serene, she stifled her tears, accepted everything, feigned not to understand; not that she loved him still after so much cruelty and contempt, but it was the story, as their coachman Joe told it, “of an old clinger who was determined to make him marry her.” Up to then a terrible obstacle--the life of the legitimate wife--had prolonged a dishonourable situation.

When the telephone rang he tossed the latest edition to its mother and hobbled to the table, trying to tear loose the clinger, for it does not sound well to hear a child gurgling at a detective's elbow.

Nothing more had reached her; and, though hope, the fast clinger to the last wreck of probability, yet whispered that he might love her still--that she might not be forgotten--that she might not be abandoned, yet fear and despondency far predominated, and their hoarse tones nearly drowned the feeble whisper of a voice which once had been loud and gay in her heart.