loved him, but
through revenge for his having trifled with me only to deceive and
desert me. Before I married your father, both he and his brother
were among my most ardent admirers. The younger brother seemed to
me far more congenial, and had he possessed one-half the chivalry
and devotion which the elder brother afterwards manifested, he
would have completely won my love. The rivalry between the two
brothers led to bitter estrangement, which soon became known to
their father, who lost no time in ascertaining its cause. His anger
on learning the facts in the case was extreme; he wrote me an
insulting letter, and threatened to disown either or both of his
sons unless they discontinued their attentions to a 'disreputable
adventuress,' as he chose to style me. Hugh Mainwaring at once
deserted me, without even a word of explanation or of farewell, and,
as if that were not enough, on more than one occasion he openly
insulted me in the presence of his father, on the streets of London.
I realized then for the first time that I cared for him, coward that
he was, though I did not love him as he thought,--had I loved him,
I would have killed him, then and there. Mad with chagrin and rage,
I married your father, partly for the position he could give me--for
I did not believe that he, the elder son and his father's
favorite, would be disowned--and partly to show his brother and
their father that I still held, as I supposed, the winning hand.
On my wedding-day I vowed that I would yet bring Hugh Mainwaring to
my feet as my lover, and when, shortly afterwards, your father was
disinherited in his favor, my desire for revenge was only
intensified. I redoubled my efforts to win him, and I found it no
difficult task; he was even more willing to play the lover to his
brother's wife than to the penniless girl whom he had known, with
no possessions but her beauty and wit. At first, our meetings
were clandestine; but we soon grew reckless, and in one or two
instances I openly boasted of my conquest, hoping thereby to arouse
his father's displeasure against him also. But in that I reckoned
wrong. He disinherited and disowned his son for having honorably
married a woman whom he considered below him in station, but for
an open affaire d'amour with that son's wife, he had not even a
word of censure.

"Your father discovered the situation and decided upon a life in
Australia. If he had then shown me some consideration, the future