e two alternatives of accepting
Mr. Waldron's protection or being thrown on the world again. She was
amazingly virtuous, or amazingly clever, which you please. To Mr.
Waldron's astonishment, she told him that she could face the prospect
of being thrown on the world; and that he must address her honorably or
leave her forever. The end of it was what the end always is, where the
man is infatuated and the woman is determined. To the disgust of his
family and friends, Mr. Waldron made a virtue of necessity, and married
her."

"How old was he?" asked Bashwood the elder, eagerly.

Bashwood the younger burst out laughing. "He was about old enough,
daddy, to be your son, and rich enough to have burst that precious
pocket-book of yours with thousand-pound notes! Don't hang your head.
It wasn't a happy marriage, though he _was_ so young and so rich. They
lived abroad, and got on well enough at first. He made a new will, of
course, as soon as he was married, and provided handsomely for his wife,
under the tender pressure of the honey-moon. But women wear out, like
other things, with time; and one fine morning Mr. Waldron woke up with
a doubt in his mind whether he had not acted like a fool. He was an
ill-tempered man; he was discontented with himself; and of course he
made his wife feel it. Having begun by quarreling with her, he got on to
suspecting her, and became savagely jealous of every male creature who
entered the house. They had no incumbrances in the shape of children,
and they moved from one place to another, just as his jealousy inclined
him, till they moved back to England at last, after having been married
close on four years. He had a lonely old house of his own among the
Yorkshire moors, and there he shut his wife and himself up from every
living creature, except his servants and his dogs. Only one result could
come, of course, of treating a high-spirited young woman in that way.
It may be her fate, or it may be chance; but, whenever a woman is
desperate, there is sure to be a man handy to take advantage of it. The
man in this case was rather a 'dark horse,' as they say on the turf. He
was a certain Captain Manuel, a native of Cuba, and (according to his
own account) an ex-officer in the Spanish navy. He had met Mr. Waldron's
beautiful wife on the journey back to England; had contrived to speak
to her in spite of her husband's jealousy; and had followed her to her
place of imprisonment in Mr. Waldron's house on the