pted hospitality. It was known of him
that he was very rich, and men said that he was mad. Such was the man
whom Josephine Murray had chosen to marry because he was an earl.

He had found her near Keswick, living with her father in a pretty
cottage looking down upon Derwentwater,--a thorough gentleman, for
Captain Murray had come of the right Murrays;--and thence he had
carried her to Lovel Grange. She had brought with her no penny of
fortune, and no settlement had been made on her. Her father, who
was then an old man, had mildly expostulated; but the ambition
of the daughter had prevailed, and the marriage was accomplished.
The beautiful young woman was carried off as a bride. It will be
unnecessary to relate what efforts had been made to take her away
from her father's house without bridal honours; but it must be told
that the Earl was a man who had never yet spared a woman in his lust.
It had been the rule, almost the creed of his life, that woman was
made to gratify the appetite of man, and that the man is but a poor
creature who does not lay hold of the sweetness that is offered to
him. He had so lived as to teach himself that those men who devote
themselves to their wives, as a wife devotes herself to her husband,
are the poor lubberly clods of creation, who had lacked the power to
reach the only purpose of living which could make life worth having.
Women had been to him a prey, as the fox is a prey to the huntsman
and the salmon to the angler. But he had acquired great skill in his
sport, and could pursue his game with all the craft which experience
will give. He could look at a woman as though he saw all heaven in
her eyes, and could listen to her as though the music of the spheres
was to be heard in her voice. Then he could whisper words which, to
many women, were as the music of the spheres, and he could persevere,
abandoning all other pleasures, devoting himself to the one
wickedness with a perseverance which almost made success certain.
But with Josephine Murray he could be successful on no other terms
than those which enabled her to walk out of the church with him as
Countess Lovel.

She had not lived with him six months before he told her that the
marriage was no marriage, and that she was--his mistress. There was
an audacity about the man which threw aside all fear of the law, and
which was impervious to threats and interference. He assured her that
he loved her, and that she was welcome to live with hi