What was the truth of all this?  That Dagworthy married hastily and found his wife uncongenial, and that Mrs. Dagworthy passed the last two years of her life in mourning over a fatal mistake, was all that could be affirmed as fact, and probably the two persons most nearly concerned would have found it difficult to throw more light upon the situation.  Outwardly it was as commonplace a story as could be told; even the accession of interest which would have come of Dagworthy’s cruelty was due to the imagination of Dunfield gossips.  Richard was miserable enough in his home, and frequently bad-tempered, but his wife had nothing worse from him than an angry word now and then.  After the first few months of their marriage, the two lived, as far as possible, separate lives; Mrs. Dagworthy spent the days with her mother and sister, Richard at the mill, and the evenings were got through with as little friction as might be between two people neither of whom could speak half a dozen words without irritating or disgusting the other.  The interesting feature of the case was the unexpectedness of Dagworthy’s choice.  It evinced so much more originality than one looked for in such a man.  It was, indeed, the outcome of ambitions which were not at all clear to their possessor.  Miss Hanmer had impressed him as no other woman had done, simply because she had graces and accomplishments of a kind hitherto unknown to him; Richard felt that for the first time in his life he was in familiar intercourse with a ‘lady.’  Her refined modes of speech, her little personal delicacies, her unconscious revelation of knowledge which he deemed the result of deep study, even her pretty and harmless witticisms at the expense of Dunfield dignitaries, touched his slumbering imagination with singular force.  Miss Hanmer, speedily observing her power, made the most of it; she was six-and-twenty, and poverty rendered her position desperate.  Dagworthy at first amused her as a specimen of the wealthy boor, but the evident delight he found in her society constrained her to admit that the boor possessed the elements of good taste.  The courtship was of rapid progress, the interests at stake being so simply defined on either side, and circumstances presenting no kind of obstacle.  The lady accepted him without hesitation, and triumphed in her good fortune.

Dagworthy conceived that his end was gained; in reality it was the beginning of his disillusion.  It speedily became clear to him that he did not really care for his wife, that he had been the victim of some self-deception, which was all the more exasperating because difficult to be explained.  The danger of brutality on his part really lay in this first discovery of his mistake; the presence of his father in the house was a most fortunate circumstance; it necessitated self-control at a time when it was hardest to maintain.  Later, he was too much altered from the elementary creature he had been to stand in danger of grossly ill-using