not her husband, she thought hardly at all. That which in the
estimation of Alice was everything, to her, at this moment, was
almost nothing. For herself, she had been sacrificed; and,--as she
told herself with bitter denunciations against herself,--had been
sacrificed through her own weakness. But that was done. Whatever way
she might go, she was lost. They had married her to a man who cared
nothing for a wife, nothing for any woman,--so at least she declared
to herself,--but who had wanted a wife that he might have an heir.
Had it been given to her to have a child, she thought that she might
have been happy,--sufficiently happy in sharing her husband's joy in
that respect. But everything had gone against her. There was nothing
in her home to give her comfort. "He looks at me every time he
sees me as the cause of his misfortune," she said to herself. Of
her husband's rank, of the future possession of his title and his
estates, she thought much. But of her own wealth she thought nothing.
It did not occur to her that she had given him enough in that respect
to make his marriage with her a comfort to him. She took it for
granted that that marriage was now one distasteful to him, as it was
to herself, and that he would eventually be the gainer if she should
so conduct herself that her marriage might be dissolved.

As to Burgo, I doubt whether she deceived herself much as to his
character. She knew well enough that he was a man infinitely less
worthy than her husband. She knew that he was a spendthrift, idle,
given to bad courses,--that he drank, that he gambled, that he lived
the life of the loosest man about the town. She knew also that
whatever chance she might have had to redeem him, had she married
him honestly before all the world, there could be no such chance if
she went to him as his mistress, abandoning her husband and all her
duties, and making herself vile in the eyes of all women. Burgo
Fitzgerald would not be influenced for good by such a woman as she
would then be. She knew much of the world and its ways, and told
herself no lies about this. But, as I have said before, she did not
count herself for much. What though she were ruined? What though
Burgo were false, mean, and untrustworthy? She loved him, and he was
the only man she ever had loved! Lower and lower she crouched before
the fire; and then, when the coals were no longer red, and the shapes
altered themselves no more, she crept into bed. As to what s