hind the door," and she laughed faintly.

"You seem to have a good opinion of him."

"I have exactly the opinion of him which he deserves," she said
bitterly; "and my opinion of him is that he is one of the wickedest
men in England."

"If he is behind the door he will enjoy that," said Edward Cossey.
"Well, if he is all this, why did you marry him?"

"Why did I marry him?" she answered with passion, "because I was
forced into it, bullied into it, starved into it. What would you do if
you were a defenceless, motherless girl of eighteen, with a drunken
father who beat you--yes, beat you with a stick--apologised in the
most gentlemanlike way next morning and then went and got drunk again?
And what would you do if that father were in the hands of a man like
my husband, body and soul in his hands, and if between them pressure
was brought to bear, and brought to bear, until at last--there, what
is the good of going on it with--you can guess the rest."

"Well, and what did he marry you for--your pretty face?"

"I don't know; he said so; it may have had something to do with it. I
think it was my ten thousand pounds, for once I had a whole ten
thousand pounds of my own, my poor mother left it me, and it was tied
up so that my father could not touch it. Well, of course, when I
married, my husband would not have any settlements, and so he took it,
every farthing."

"And what did he do with it?"

"Spent it upon some other woman in London--most of it. I found him
out; he gave her thousands of pounds at once."

"Well, I should not have thought that he was so generous," he said
with a laugh.

She paused a moment and covered her face with her hand, and then went
on: "If you only knew, Edward, if you had the faintest idea what my
life was till a year and a half ago, when I first saw you, you would
pity me and understand why I am bad, and passionate, and jealous, and
everything that I ought not to be. I never had any happiness as a girl
--how could I in such a home as ours?--and then almost before I was a
woman I was handed over to that man. Oh, how I hated him, and what I
endured!"

"Yes, it can't have been very pleasant."

"Pleasant--but there, we have done with each other now--we don't even
speak much except in public, that's my price for holding my tongue
about the lady in London and one or two other little things--so what
is the use of talking of it? It was a horrible nightmare, but it has
gone. And then," she went o