et as he thought of all this, and nursed his rage, and told
himself how impossible it was that he should even pretend to live
with such a woman with continued confidence, even then he was at
moments almost overcome by the tenderness of his recollections. He
had loved her so entirely; and she to his outward eyes and outward
ears had been so fit to be loved! He had thanked his stars that after
running into so great a peril with that other lady it had at last
been given to him to settle his heart where it might dwell securely.
She had required from him no compliments, none of the little
weaknesses of love-making, no pretences, had demanded from him the
taking of no trouble which would have grated against his feeling. She
had been everything that his very soul desired. Even on the day after
their wedding he had been able to sit down with her in a quiet and
assured conviction that she was all that he wanted to make him happy.
And she had played her part so well! She had been to him as though it
had been a fresh thing to her to love a man with all her heart, and
to be able to talk to him of her love. And yet she, the while, was
in secret and most intimate communication with a man to whom he
had been in the habit of applying within his own breast all the
vilest epithets which the language could afford. "Swindler, thief,
scoundrel," were the terms he had thought of. In his dislike to the
ways of the world in general he had declared to himself that the
world admitted such as Sir Francis within its high places without
disgust. This was the man who had coolly demanded to be intimate with
him, and had done so in order that he might maintain his acquaintance
with his wife!

We know how wrong he was in these thoughts;--how grievously he
wronged her of whom he was thinking. Of the worst of all these sins
she was absolutely innocent;--of so much the worst that the fault of
which she had not been innocent was not worth regarding when thought
of in reference to that other crime. But still it was thus that he
believed, and though he was aware that he was about to submit himself
to absolute misery in decreeing their separation, yet there was to
his thinking no other remedy. He had been kept in the dark. To the
secrets of others around him he was he declared to himself absolutely
indifferent. They might have their mysteries and it would be nothing
to him. He had desired to have one whose mysteries should be his
mysteries; who should share