Mrs. Garrow, my wife’s mother, was not, I think, an amiable woman.  She must have been between seventy and eighty when I first knew her; but she was still vigorous, and had still a pair of what must once have been magnificent, and were still brilliant and fierce black eyes.  She was in no wise a clever woman, nor was our dear Harriet a clever girl.  Garrow on the other hand and his daughter were both very markedly clever, and this produced a closeness of companionship and alliance between the father and daughter which painfully excited the jealousy of the wife and mother.  But it was totally impossible for her to cabal with her daughter against the object of her jealousy.  Harriet always seeking to be a peacemaker, was ever, if peace could not be made, stanchly on Theo’s side.  I am afraid that Mrs. Garrow did not love her second daughter at all; and I am inclined to suspect that my marriage was in some degree facilitated by her desire to get Theo out of the house.  She was a very fierce old lady, and did not, I fear, contribute to the happiness of any member of her family.

How well I remember the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. Garrow, and those two girls in my mother’s drawing-room in the Via dei Malcontenti.  The two girls, I remember, were dressed exactly alike and very dowdily.  They had just arrived in Florence from Tours, I think, where they had passed a year, or perhaps two, since quitting “The Braddons” at Torquay; and everything about them from top to toe was provincial, not to say shabby.  It was a Friday, my mother’s reception day, and the room soon filled with gaily dressed and smart people, with more than one pretty girl among them.  But I had already got into conversation with Theodosia Garrow, and, to the gross neglect of my duties as master of the house, and to the scandal of more than one fair lady, so I remained, till a summons more than twice repeated by her father took her away.

It was not that I had fallen in love at first sight, as the phrase is, by any means.  But I at once felt that I had got hold of something of a quite other calibre of intelligence from anything I had been recently accustomed to meet with in those around me, and with a moral nature that was sympathetic to my own.  And I found it very delightful.  It is no doubt true that, had her personal appearance been other than it was, I should not probably have found her conversation equally delightful.  But I am sure that it is equally true that had she been in face, figure, and person all she was, and at the same time stupid, or even not sympathetic, I should not have been equally attracted to her.