tly. Among Lady Carbury's faults had
never been that of even incipient,--not even of sentimental--infidelity
to her husband. When as a lovely and penniless girl of eighteen she
had consented to marry a man of forty-four who had the spending of a
large income, she had made up her mind to abandon all hope of that
sort of love which poets describe and which young people generally
desire to experience. Sir Patrick at the time of his marriage was
red-faced, stout, bald, very choleric, generous in money, suspicious
in temper, and intelligent. He knew how to govern men. He could read
and understand a book. There was nothing mean about him. He had his
attractive qualities. He was a man who might be loved,--but he was
hardly a man for love. The young Lady Carbury had understood her
position and had determined to do her duty. She had resolved before
she went to the altar that she would never allow herself to flirt and
she had never flirted. For fifteen years things had gone tolerably
well with her,--by which it is intended that the reader should
understand that they had so gone that she had been able to tolerate
them. They had been home in England for three or four years, and then
Sir Patrick had returned with some new and higher appointment. For
fifteen years, though he had been passionate, imperious, and often
cruel, he had never been jealous. A boy and a girl had been born to
them, to whom both father and mother had been over indulgent,--but the
mother, according to her lights, had endeavoured to do her duty by
them. But from the commencement of her life she had been educated in
deceit, and her married life had seemed to make the practice of deceit
necessary to her. Her mother had run away from her father, and she had
been tossed to and fro between this and that protector, sometimes
being in danger of wanting any one to care for her, till she had been
made sharp, incredulous, and untrustworthy by the difficulties of her
position. But she was clever, and had picked up an education and good
manners amidst the difficulties of her childhood,--and had been
beautiful to look at.

To marry and have the command of money, to do her duty correctly, to
live in a big house and be respected, had been her ambition,--and during
the first fifteen years of her married life she was successful amidst
great difficulties. She would smile within five minutes of violent
ill-usage. Her husband would even strike her,--and the first effort of
her mind