ld not be a woman
of family: to bowl over both of these beliefs together, he married the
watchmaker's daughter, and Mary Owen became a baronet's bride.

Perhaps--I 'm not very sure of even that--her marriage gave her one
entire day of unbroken happiness,--I do not believe it gave her a week,
and I know it did not a month. Whether it was that his friends were less
shocked than he had hoped for, or that the shock wore out sooner, he
was frantic at the failure of his grand coup, and immediately set about
revenging on his unhappy wife all the disappointment she had caused him.
After a series of cruelties--some of which savored of madness--but which
she bore without complaint, or even murmur, he bethought him that her
religious belief offered a groundwork for torment which he had hitherto
neglected. He accordingly determined to make his profession to the
Church of Rome, and to call on her to follow. This she stoutly refused;
and he declared that they should separate. The menace had no longer a
terror for her. She accepted whatever terms he was pleased to dictate;
she only stipulated as to the child, and for him but to the extent we
have already seen. The first year after the separation the boy passed
with his father; the second he spent with his mother. At the end of the
third year, when her turn again came round, Sir Roger refused to part
with him; and when reminded of his promise, coarsely replied that
his boy, above all things, must be "a gentleman," and that he was now
arrived at an age when association with low and vulgar people would
attach a tone to his mind and a fashion to his thoughts that all the
education in the world would not eradicate; and that rather than yield
to such a desecration, he would litigate the matter to the last shilling
of his estate. Such was the cause before the Barons of the Exchequer:
the mother pleading that her child should be restored to her; the father
opposing the demand that the mother's habits and associates were not
in accordance with the prospects of one who should inherit title and
fortune; and, last of all, that the boy was devotedly attached to him,
and bore scarcely a trace of affection for his mother.

So painful were the disclosures that came out during the trial, so
subversive of every feeling that pertains to the sanctity of the family,
and so certain to work injuriously on the character of the child whose
interests were at stake, that the Judge, made more than one attempt to