ten you have made me mock-speeches of
congratulation on my wealth! Oh, Marian, never laugh again. Thank God
for your poverty--it has made you your own mistress, and has saved you
from the lot that has fallen on ME."

A sad beginning on the lips of a young wife!--sad in its quiet
plain-spoken truth. The few days we had all passed together at
Blackwater Park had been many enough to show me--to show any one--what
her husband had married her for.

"You shall not be distressed," she said, "by hearing how soon my
disappointments and my trials began--or even by knowing what they were.
It is bad enough to have them on my memory. If I tell you how he
received the first and last attempt at remonstrance that I ever made,
you will know how he has always treated me, as well as if I had
described it in so many words. It was one day at Rome when we had
ridden out together to the tomb of Cecilia Metella. The sky was calm
and lovely, and the grand old ruin looked beautiful, and the
remembrance that a husband's love had raised it in the old time to a
wife's memory, made me feel more tenderly and more anxiously towards my
husband than I had ever felt yet. 'Would you build such a tomb for ME,
Percival?' I asked him. 'You said you loved me dearly before we were
married, and yet, since that time----' I could get no farther. Marian!
he was not even looking at me! I pulled down my veil, thinking it best
not to let him see that the tears were in my eyes. I fancied he had
not paid any attention to me, but he had. He said, 'Come away,' and
laughed to himself as he helped me on to my horse. He mounted his own
horse and laughed again as we rode away. 'If I do build you a tomb,'
he said, 'it will be done with your own money. I wonder whether
Cecilia Metella had a fortune and paid for hers.' I made no reply--how
could I, when I was crying behind my veil? 'Ah, you light-complexioned
women are all sulky,' he said. 'What do you want? compliments and soft
speeches? Well! I'm in a good humour this morning. Consider the
compliments paid and the speeches said.' Men little know when they say
hard things to us how well we remember them, and how much harm they do
us. It would have been better for me if I had gone on crying, but his
contempt dried up my tears and hardened my heart. From that time,
Marian, I never checked myself again in thinking of Walter Hartright.
I let the memory of those happy days, when we were so fond of each
other in secr