in the world.  He had been left her sole guardian by their old father, who had died a twelve-month before; and she, trusting her brother entirely, was glad to leave everything in his hands.  The marriage was accomplished with all possible speed, and it was not till nearly two months later that an accident revealed to Magdalen Linders, what indeed in any case she must have discovered before long—­what manner of man this was she had got for her husband.

Then she did not pine away, nor sicken with despair, being of a great courage, strong to bear evil and misfortune, and not made of the stuff that gives way under cruel deception and disappointment.  She uttered only one reproach—­

“You should have told me of all this, Adolphe,” she said.

“You would not have married me,” he answered gloomily.

“I—­I do not know.  Ah, I loved you so much, and so truly!”

And she did love him still; and clung to him to the last, but not the less was she broken-hearted, so far as any enjoyment of life was concerned; and her husband saw it.  All sense of rejoicing seemed to die out of her heart for ever.  She hated the splendour with which he sometimes surrounded her, even more than the paltry shifts and expedients to which at other times they had to resort, when he had spent all his money, and there was no more forthcoming for the moment; she wept when her children were born, thinking of the iniquity of the world they had entered; and when her two little boys died one after the other, there was almost a sense of relief mixed with the bitterness of her sorrow, as she reflected on the father she could not have taught them to respect, and on the abject evil and misery from which she could not have shielded them.

As for M. Linders, he at once adored and neglected his wife, as was the nature of the man; that is, he adored her theoretically for her rare beauty, but neglected her practically, when, after a few months of married life, he saw her bloom fading, and her animation vanish, in the utter despondency which had seized her, and which found its outward expression in a certain studied composure and coldness of manner.  There soon came a time when he would have willingly freed himself altogether from the constraint of her presence.  He travelled almost incessantly, spending the summer and autumn at the German watering-places; the winter in France, or Belgium, or Italy; and he would sometimes propose that she should remain at a Paris hotel till he could return to her.  In the first years after their marriage she objected vehemently.  She was so young, so unused to solitude, that she felt a certain terror at the prospect of being left alone; and, moreover, she still clung with a sort of desperation to her girlish illusions, and, loving her husband, could not cease to believe in his love for her.  She had plans, too, for reforming him, and for a long time would not allow herself to be convinced of their utter vanity and hopelessness.  After the death