gnant with him that he did not reform. I
say it would have been easier for him to find his way alone up the
Matterhorn in the dark than to reform--after his marriage.

"There had been hope for him before--there was none afterward. A pretty
inducement to reform, she offered him! I knew that woman through and
through, and I tell you that there never lived a more selfish, feeble,
vain, and miserable thing. All was self--self--self. When she was mated
to a man who never did think of self--whose one joy was to be giving,
whose generosity was no less a by-word than his recklessness, who was
delighted if she expressed a wish, and would move heaven and earth to
gratify it; the more eagerly the more unreasonable it was--_mes amis_, I
think it is easy to guess the end--the end was ruin. I watched it coming
on, and I thought of you, Frau Graefin. Vittoria was expecting her
confinement in the course of a few months. I never heard her express a
hope as to the coming child, never a word of joy, never a thought as to
the wider cares which a short time would bring to her. She did say
often, with a sigh, that women with young children were so tied; they
could not do this, and they could not do that. She was in great
excitement when she was invited to come here; in great triumph when she
returned.

"Eugen, she said, was a fool not to conciliate his brother and that
doting old saint (her words, _gnaedige Frau_, not mine) more than he did.
It was evident that they would do anything for him if he only flattered
them, but he was so insanely downright--she called it stupid, she said.
The idea of missing such advantages when a few words of common
politeness would have secured them. I may add that what she called
'common politeness' was just the same thing that I called smooth
hypocrisy.

"Very shortly after this her child was born. I did not see her then. Her
husband lost all his money on a race, and came to smash, as you English
say. She wrote to me. She was in absolute need of money, she said; Eugen
had not been able to give her any. He had said they must retrench.
Retrench! was that what she married him for! There was a set of
turquoises that she must have, or another woman would get them, and then
she would die. And her milliner, a most unreasonable woman, had sent
word that she must be paid.

"So she was grumbling in a letter which I received one afternoon, and
the next I was frightfully startled to see herself. She came in and said