ceedingly, and felt something very near to hatred
for Monsieur Cleremont, I accepted all she said as incontestable truth.
Still I grieved over the fact that papa was not of my own mind, and did
not see her and all her fascinations as I did.

There is something indescribably touching in the gentle sadness of
certain buoyant bright natures. Like the low notes in a treble voice,
there is that that seems to vibrate in our hearts at a most susceptible
moment, and with the force of an unforeseen contrast; and it was thus
that, in her graver times, she won over me an ascendancy, and inspired
an interest which, had I been other than a mere boy, had certainly been
love.

Perhaps I should not have been even conscious, as I was of this
sentiment, if it were not for the indignation I felt at Cleremont's
treatment of her. Over and over again my temper was pushed to its last
limit by his brutality and coarseness. His tone was a perpetual sneer,
and his wife seldom spoke before him without his directing towards her
a sarcasm or an impertinence. This was especially remarkable if she
uttered any sentiment at all elevated, when his banter would be ushered
in with a burst of derisive laughter.

Nothing could be more perfect than the way she bore these trials. There
was no assumed martyrdom, no covert appeal for sympathy, no air of
suffering asking for protection. No! whether it came as ridicule or
rebuke, she accepted it gently and good-humoredly; trying, when she
could, to turn it off with a laugh, or when too grave for that, bearing
it with quiet forbearance.

I often wondered why my father did not check these persecutions, for
they were such, and very cruel ones too; but he scarcely seemed to
notice them, or if he did, it would be by a smile, far more like
enjoyment of Cleremont's coarse wit than reprehending or reproving it.

"I wonder how that woman stands it?" I once overheard Hotham say to
Eccles; and the other replied,--

"I don't think she _does_ stand it. I mistake her much if she is as
forgiving as she looks."

Why do I recall these things? Why do I dwell on incidents and passages
which had no actual bearing on my own destiny? Only because they serve
to show the terrible school in which I was brought up; the mingled
dissipation, splendor, indolence, and passion in which my boyhood was
passed. Surrounded by men of reckless habits, and women but a mere shade
better, life presented itself to me as one series of costly plea