rendering him
for the time being utterly callous to the rights or feelings of
others, provided that he attained his end. In short, had he been born
to a good position and a large fortune, it is quite possible,
providing always that his strong passions had not at some period of
his life led him irremediably astray, that he would have lived
virtuous and respected, and died in good odour, leaving behind him a
happy memory. But fate had placed him in antagonism with the world,
and yet had endowed him with a gnawing desire to be of the world, as
it appeared most desirable to him; and then, to complete his ruin
circumstances had thrown him into temptations from which inexperience
and the headlong strength of his passions gave him no opportunity to
escape.

It may at first appear strange that a man so calculating and whose
desires seemed to be fixed upon such a material end as the acquirement
by artifice or even fraud of the wealth which he coveted, should also
nourish in his heart so bitter a hatred and so keen a thirst for
revenge upon a woman as Mr. Quest undoubtedly did towards his
beautiful wife. It would have seemed more probable that he would have
left heroics alone and attempted to turn his wife's folly into a means
of wealth and self-advancement: and this would no doubt have been so
had Mrs. Quest's estimate of his motives in marrying her been an
entirely correct one. She had told Edward Cossey, it will be
remembered, that her husband had married her for her money--the ten
thousand pounds of which he stood so badly in need. Now this was the
truth to a certain extent, and a certain extent only. He had wanted
the ten thousand pounds, in fact at the moment money was necessary to
him. But, and this his wife had never known or realised, he had been,
and still was, also in love with her. Possibly the ten thousand pounds
would have proved a sufficient inducement to him without the love, but
the love was none the less there. Their relations, however, had never
been happy ones. She had detested him from the fist, and had not
spared to say so. No man with any refinement--and whatever he lacked
Mr. Quest had refinement--could bear to be thus continually repulsed
by a woman, and so it came to pass that their intercourse had always
been of the most strained nature. Then when she at last had obtained
the clue to the secret of his life, under threat of exposure she drove
her bargain, of which the terms were complete separation in a