severed in through
many weeks.

"Her vanity had been hurt, her expectations disappointed, at my having
left her for Lyons, with no other parting words than such as I might
have spoken to any other woman whom I looked on merely as a friend. That
she felt any genuine love for me I never have believed, and never shall:
but I had that practical ability, that firmness of will, that obvious
personal ascendancy over most of those with whom I came in contact,
which extorts the respect and admiration of women of all characters,
and even of women of no character at all. As far as her senses, her
instincts, and her pride could take her, I had won her over to me but
no farther--because no farther could she go. I mention pride among her
motives, advisedly. She was proud of being the object of such attentions
as I had now paid to her for years, because she fancied that, through
those attentions, I, who, more or less, ruled everyone else in her
sphere, had yielded to her the power of ruling _me._ The manner of my
departure from England showed her too plainly that she had miscalculated
her influence, and that the power, in her case, as in the case of
others, was all on my side. Hence the wound to her vanity, to which I
have alluded.

"It was while this wound was still fresh that you met her, and appealed
to her self-esteem in a new direction. You must have seen clearly
enough, that such proposals as yours far exceeded the most ambitious
expectations formed by her father. No man's alliance could have lifted
her much higher out of her own class: she knew this, and from that
knowledge married you--married you for your station, for your name,
for your great friends and connections, for your father's money, and
carriages, and fine houses; for everything, in short, but yourself.

"Still, in spite of the temptations of youth, wealth, and birth which
your proposals held out to her, she accepted them at first (I made her
confess it herself) with a secret terror and misgiving, produced by
the remembrance of me. These sensations, however, she soon quelled,
or fancied she quelled; and these, it was now my last, best chance to
revive. I had a whole year for the work before me; and I felt certain of
success.

"On your side, you had immense advantages. You had social superiority;
you had her father's full approbation; and you were married to her. If
she had loved you for yourself, loved you for anything besides her
own sensual interests, her vul