“It was his own intemperance!”

“Intemperance!  It was brandy—­sheer brandy.  He brought himself to such a state that nothing but brandy would keep him alive, and in which brandy was sure to kill him—­and it did kill him.  Did you ever hear of the horrors of drink?”

“Yes; I have heard of such a state.”

“I hope you may never live to see it.  It is a sight that would stick by you for ever.  But I saw it, and tended him through the whole, as though I had been his servant.  I remained with him when that man who opened the door for you could no longer endure the room.  I was with him when the strong woman from the hospital, though she could not understand his words, almost fainted at what she saw and heard.  He was punished, Harry.  I need wish no farther vengeance on him, even for all his cruelty, his injustice, his unmanly treachery.  Is it not fearful to think that any man should have the power of bringing himself to such an end as that?”

Harry was thinking rather how fearful it was that a man should have it in his power to drag any woman through such a Gehenna as that which this lord had created.  He felt that had Julia Brabazon been his, as she had once promised him, he never would have allowed himself to speak a harsh word to her, to have looked at her except with loving eyes.  But she had chosen to join herself to a man who had treated her with a cruelty exceeding all that his imagination could have conceived.  “It is a mercy that he has gone,” said he at last.

“It is a mercy for both.  Perhaps you can understand now something of my married life.  And through it all I had but one friend—­if I may call him a friend who had come to terms with my husband, and who was to have been his agent in destroying me.  But when this man understood from me that I was not what he had been taught to think me—­which my husband told him I was—­he relented.”

“May I ask what was that man’s name?”

“His name is Pateroff.  He is a Pole, but he speaks English like an Englishman.  In my presence he told Lord Ongar that he was false and brutal.  Lord Ongar laughed, with that little, low, sneering laughter which was his nearest approach to merriment, and told Count Pateroff that that was of course his game before me.  There, Harry, I will tell you nothing more of it.  You will understand enough to know what I have suffered; and if you can believe that I have not sinned—­”

“Oh, Lady Ongar!”

“Well, I will not doubt you again.  But as far as I can learn you are nearly alone in your belief.  What.  Hermy thinks I cannot tell, but she will soon come to think as Hugh may bid her.  And I shall not blame her.  What else can she do, poor creature?”

“I am sure she believes no ill of you.”