, in a wary manner, and not indelicately, would venture in private
interviews gently to make distant allusions to this questionable
propensity. She divined him. But, in her cold loveless way, said it was
witless to be telling one's dreams, especially foolish ones; but if the
unfortunate man liked connubially to rejoice his soul with such
chimeras, much connubial joy might they give him. All this was sad--a
touching case--but all might, perhaps, have been borne by the
unfortunate man--conscientiously mindful of his vow--for better or for
worse--to love and cherish his dear Goneril so long as kind heaven might
spare her to him--but when, after all that had happened, the devil of
jealousy entered her, a calm, clayey, cakey devil, for none other could
possess her, and the object of that deranged jealousy, her own child, a
little girl of seven, her father's consolation and pet; when he saw
Goneril artfully torment the little innocent, and then play the maternal
hypocrite with it, the unfortunate man's patient long-suffering gave
way. Knowing that she would neither confess nor amend, and might,
possibly, become even worse than she was, he thought it but duty as a
father, to withdraw the child from her; but, loving it as he did, he
could not do so without accompanying it into domestic exile himself.
Which, hard though it was, he did. Whereupon the whole female
neighborhood, who till now had little enough admired dame Goneril, broke
out in indignation against a husband, who, without assigning a cause,
could deliberately abandon the wife of his bosom, and sharpen the sting
to her, too, by depriving her of the solace of retaining her offspring.
To all this, self-respect, with Christian charity towards Goneril, long
kept the unfortunate man dumb. And well had it been had he continued so;
for when, driven to desperation, he hinted something of the truth of the
case, not a soul would credit it; while for Goneril, she pronounced all
he said to be a malicious invention. Ere long, at the suggestion of some
woman's-rights women, the injured wife began a suit, and, thanks to able
counsel and accommodating testimony, succeeded in such a way, as not
only to recover custody of the child, but to get such a settlement
awarded upon a separation, as to make penniless the unfortunate man (so
he averred), besides, through the legal sympathy she enlisted, effecting
a judicial blasting of his private reputation. What made it yet more
lamentable was,