he
prophetically felt would be its result. Unfortunately, both she and my
friends were foolish enough to avow their belief that the divorce was
obtained solely with a view of securing me as a successor; and it
was this argument more than any other that convinced me of my duty to
protect her. Enough, I married, not only in spite of all opposition--but
BECAUSE of it.

"My mother would have reconciled herself to the marriage, but my wife
never forgave the opposition, and, by some hellish instinct divining
that her power over me might be weakened by maternal influence,
precipitated a quarrel which forever separated us. With the little
capital left by my father, divided between my mother and myself, I took
my wife to a western city. Our small income speedily dwindled under
the debts of her former husband, which she had assumed to purchase
her freedom. I endeavored to utilize a good education and some
accomplishments in music and the languages by giving lessons and
by contributing to the press. In this my wife first made a show of
assisting me, but I was not long in discovering that her intelligence
was superficial and shallow, and that the audacity of expression,
which I had believed to be originality of conviction, was simply
shamelessness, and a desire for notoriety. She had a facility in writing
sentimental poetry, which had been efficacious in her matrimonial
confidences, but which editors of magazines and newspapers found to be
shallow and insincere. To my astonishment, she remained unaffected
by this, as she was equally impervious to the slights and sneers that
continually met us in society. At last the inability to pay one of her
former husband's claims brought to me a threat and an anonymous letter.
I laid them before her, when a scene ensued which revealed the
blindness of my folly in all its hideous hopelessness: she accused me of
complicity in her divorce, and deception in regard to my own fortune. In
a speech, whose language was a horrible revelation of her early habits,
she offered to arrange a divorce from me as she had from her former
husband. She gave as a reason her preference for another, and her belief
that the scandal of a suit would lend her a certain advertisement and
prestige. It was a combination of Messalina and Mrs. Jarley"--

"Pardon! I remember not a Madame Jarley," said the priest.

"Of viciousness and commercial calculation," continued Hurlstone
hurriedly. "I don't remember what happened; she