true to his word!

To see her now, this girl, insisting to share his name, for a slip of his
tongue, despite the warning sent her through her uncle, had that face
much as a leaden winter landscape pretends to be the country radiant in
colour. She belonged to the order of the variable animals--a woman
indeed!--womanish enough in that. There are men who love women--the idea
of woman. Woman is their shepherdess of sheep. He loved freedom, loathed
the subjection of a partnership; could undergo it only in adoration of an
ineffable splendour. He had stepped to the altar fancying she might keep
to her part of the contract by appearing the miracle that subdued him.
Seen by light of day, this bitter object beside him was a witch without
her spells; that is, the skeleton of the seductive, ghastliest among
horrors and ironies. Let her have the credit of doing her work thoroughly
before the exposure. She had done it. She might have helped--such was the
stipulation of his mad freak in consenting to the bondage--yes, she might
have helped to soften the sting of his wound. She was beside him bearing
his name, for the perpetual pouring of an acid on the wound that vile
Henrietta--poisoned honey of a girl!--had dealt.

He glanced down at his possession:--heaven and the yawning pit were the
contrast! Poisoned honey is after all honey while you eat it. Here there
was nothing but a rocky bowl of emptiness. And who was she? She was the
sister of Henrietta's husband. He was expected to embrace the sister of
Henrietta's husband. Those two were on their bridal tour.

This creature was also the daughter of an ancient impostor and desperado
called the Old Buccaneer; a distinguished member of the family of the
Lincolnshire Kirbys, boasting a present representative grimly acquitted,
men said, on a trial for murder. An eminent alliance! Society considered
the Earl of Fleetwood wildish, though he could manage his affairs. He and
his lawyers had them under strict control. How of himself? The prize of
the English marriage market had taken to his bosom for his winsome bride
the daughter of the Old Buccaneer. He was to mix his blood with the blood
of the Lincolnshire Kirbys, lying pallid under the hesitating acquittal
of a divided jury.

How had he come to this pass, which swung him round to think almost
regretfully of the scorned multitude of fair besiegers in the market,
some of whom had their unpoetic charms?

He was renowned and unrivalled as th