and how to gratify her fancy she had thrown
from her everything solid and worth keeping in the world. She had
brought herself to confess, in bitterness and anguish, that he did not
love her, and never had, and that she was a miserable, unhappy dupe.
But, notwithstanding, she loved him still, though she dreaded the sight
of him, for she got little from him now but oaths and taunts.

It was soon after their return from Brighton that he broke out, first
on some trivial occasion, and cursed her aloud. He said he hated the
sight of her pale face, for it always reminded him of ruin and misery;
that he had the greatest satisfaction in telling her that he was
utterly ruined; that his father was dead, and had left his money
elsewhere, and that her father was little better; that she would soon
be in the workhouse; and, in fine, said everything that his fierce,
wild, brutal temper could suggest.

She never tempted another outbreak of the kind; that one was too
horrible for her, and crushed her spirit at once. She only tried by
mildness and submission to deprecate his rage. But every day he came
home looking fiercer and wilder; as time went on her heart sunk within
her, and she dreaded something more fearful than she had experienced
yet.

As I said, after a month or two, his first companions began to drop
off, or only came, bullying and swearing, to demand money. And now
another class of men began to take their place, the sight of whom made
her blood cold--worse dressed than the others, and worse mannered, with
strange, foul oaths on their lips. And then, after a time, two
ruffians, worse looking than any of the others, began to come there, of
whom the one she dreaded most was called Maitland.

He was always very civil to her; but there was something about him, his
lowering, evil face, and wild looks, which made him a living nightmare
to her. She knew he was flying from justice, by the way he came and
went, and by the precaution always taken when he was there. But when he
came to live in the room over theirs, and when, by listening at odd
times, she found that he and her husband were engaged in some great
villany, the nature of which she could not understand, then she saw
that there was nothing to do, but in sheer desperation to sit down and
wait the catastrophe.

About this time she made another discovery, that she was penniless, and
had been so some time. George had given her money from time to time to
carry on household ex