letter from Dresden. To Mrs. Holt
he sent no reply: but he used her letter as the ground for that which
he made to Lady Grant, writing as though Mrs. Holt's words had come
directly from his wife. "They say that I have sacrificed Cecilia
without the slightest fault on her part. I have not sacrificed her,
and there has been terrible fault on her part. Fault! A young woman
marries a man while she is yet engaged to another, and tells the
poor dupe whom she has got within her clutches nothing of her first
engagement! Is there no fault in that? And she afterwards entertains
the first man at her husband's house, and corresponds with him, and
prepares at last to receive him there as a friend, and that without a
word on the subject spoken to her husband! Is there no fault in that?
And at last the truth becomes known to him because the base man is
discontented with the arrangements that have been made, and chooses
to punish her by exposing her at last to the wrath of her husband! I
say nothing of him. With his conduct in the world I have no concern.
But can all that have taken place with no fault on her part? What in
such a state of things should I have done? Should I have contented
myself simply with forbidding my wife to receive the man at my house?
Should I have asked her no question as to the past? Should I have
passed over that engagement which had been in full existence during
the last twelve months, and have said nothing of it? Or should I have
expressed my anger and then have forgiven her, and attempted to live
with her as though this man had never existed? Knowing me as you do,
can you say that that would have been possible to me? How could I
have lived with a wife of whom I knew so much as I had then learned
of mine,--but had known so little before. Had I been a man of the
world, living for the world, careless as to my own home except as to
the excellence of my dinner and the comfort of my bed, it might have
been possible. A man trusting for his happiness to such means might
perhaps have continued to exist and not have been broken-hearted. But
I think you will understand that such could not be the case with me.
I looked for my happiness to my wife's society, and I discovered when
I had married that I could not find it there. I could never respect
her!

"But she tells me that having married her I have no right to
sacrifice her. As I had been fool enough to allow myself to be so
quickly allured by her charms, and had ma