. I understand him better now that I know the
circumstances of which he has been the product. (Of course one is always
a product of circumstances, unless one can manage to be superior to
them.) His wife, the daughter of an American consul in Ireland, was a
charming but somewhat feather-brained person, rather given to whims and
caprices; very pretty, very young, very much spoiled, very attractive,
very undisciplined. All went well enough with them until her father was
recalled to America, because of some change in political administration.
The young Mrs. La Touche seemed to have no resources apart from her
family, and even her baby 'Jackeen' failed to absorb her as might have
been expected.

"We thought her a most trying woman at this time," said Lady Killbally.
"She seemed to have no thought of her husband's interests, and none of
the responsibilities that she had assumed in marrying him; her only idea
of life appeared to be amusement and variety and gaiety. Gerald was
a student, and always very grave and serious; the kind of man who
invariably marries a butterfly, if he can find one to make him
miserable. He was exceedingly patient; but after the birth of little
Broona, Adeline became so homesick and depressed and discontented that,
although the journey was almost an impossibility at the time, Gerald
took her back to her people, and left her with them, while he returned
to his duties at Trinity College. Their life, I suppose, had been very
unhappy for a year or two before this, and when he came home to Dublin
without his children, he looked a sad and broken man. He was absolutely
faithful to his ideals, I am glad to say, and never wavered in his
allegiance to his wife, however disappointed he may have been in her;
going over regularly to spend his long vacations in America, although
she never seemed to wish to see him. At last she fell into a state of
hopeless melancholia; and it was rather a relief to us all to feel that
we had judged her too severely, and that her unreasonableness and her
extraordinary caprices had been born of mental disorder more than of
moral obliquity. Gerald gave up everything to nurse her and rouse her
from her apathy; but she faded away without ever once coming back to a
more normal self, and that was the end of it all. Gerald's father had
died meanwhile, and he had fallen heir to the property and the estates.
They were very much encumbered, but he is gradually getting affairs into
a less chao