t her, and refuse to let her enter the house. It was the
crowning piece of barbarism to a long course of jealous cruelties.
Mrs. Martival spent that night with some friends, and seems even
then to have hesitated for a long time. Her married life had been
one long disappointment, and this brutal action of her husband had
ended it. Sir Geoffrey Kynaston was madly in love with her, and she
was one of those women who must be loved. In the end she ran away
with him, which seemed a very natural thing for her to do.

"The queerest part of it is to come, though. Sir Geoffrey was
devoted to her, and would have married her at once if Mr. Martival
would have sued for a divorce. He showed her every kindness, and he
lavished his money and his love upon her. But it seems that she
was a devout Roman Catholic, and the horror of what she had done
preyed upon her so, that in less than a month she left Sir
Geoffrey, and entered one of the lower sort of nunneries as a
menial. From there she went to the wars as a nurse, and did a great
deal of good. When she returned, of all places in the world she
came back to the Villa Fiorlessa, partly from a curious notion of
penance, that she might be continually reminded of her sin. The
queerest part of it is, however, that the people round here behaved
like real Christians, and jolly different to what they would have
done at home. They knew all her history, and they welcomed her back
as though that month in her life had never been. That's what I call
charity, real charity, dad! Don't know what you think about it.
Well, there she's lived ever since with her sister, who had lots of
money (she died last year), and the poor people all around just
worshipped them.

"Now, to go back a bit. Mr. Martival, although he had been such
a brute to his wife, no sooner found out that she was with Sir
Geoffrey Kynaston than he swore the most horrible oaths of
vengeance, and went off after them. He was brought back in a fever,
with a pistol shot in his leg, which served him d----d well right,
I think. No sooner was he better than he started off again in
pursuit, but Sir Geoffrey dodged him, and they never met. Meanwhile
the young cub, whom you will recognize as Mr. M----, had grown up,
and what must his father do when he returned but tell him as