o propound a singular theory respecting his life,
averring, in general terms, that it had been spoilt by women,--
a speech more epigrammatic, perhaps, than accurate, since of
the two women who had loved him best, his mother and his wife,
he had broken the heart of the one, and ruined the happiness
of the other. And yet it was not without its grain of meaning,
however false and distorted; for M. Linders, who was not more
consistent than the rest of mankind, had, by some queer
anomaly, along with all his hardness, and recklessness, and
selfishness, a capacity for affection after his own fashion,
and an odd sensitiveness to the praise and blame of those
women whom he cared for and respected which did not originate
merely in vanity and love of applause. He had been fond of his
mother, though he had ignored her wishes and abused her
generosity; and he had hated his sister Therese, because he
imagined that she had come between them. Their reproaches had
been unbearable to him, and though his wife had never blamed
him in words, there had been a mute upbraiding in her mournful
looks and dejected spirits, which he had resented as a wrong
done to the love he had once felt for her. In the absence of
many subjects for self-congratulation, he rather piqued
himself on a warm heart and sensitive feelings, and chose to
consider them ill-requited by the cold words and sad glances
of those whose happiness he was destroying. The idea that he
should set matters straight by adjusting his life to meet
their preconceived notions of right and wrong, would have
appeared to him highly absurd; but he considered them
unreasonable and himself ill-used when they refused to give
their approbation to his proceedings, and this idea of ill-
usage and unreasonableness he was willing to encourage, as it
enabled him to shift the responsibility of their unhappiness
from his own shoulders on to theirs, and to deaden the sense
of remorse which would make itself felt from time to time. For
in the worst of men, they say, there still lingers some touch
of kindly human feeling, and M. Linders, though amongst the
most worthless, was not perhaps absolutely the worst of men.
He was selfish enough to inflict any amount of pain, yet not
hardened enough to look unmoved on his victims. He had, in
truth, taken both their misery and their reproaches to heart;
and sometimes, especially since his wife's death, he had
surprised in himself a strange, unaccountable desire f