“Her vanity had been hurt, her expectations disappointed, at my having left her for Lyons, with no other parting words than such as I might have spoken to any other woman whom I looked on merely as a friend.  That she felt any genuine love for me I never have believed, and never shall:  but I had that practical ability, that firmness of will, that obvious personal ascendancy over most of those with whom I came in contact, which extorts the respect and admiration of women of all characters, and even of women of no character at all.  As far as her senses, her instincts, and her pride could take her, I had won her over to me but no farther—­because no farther could she go.  I mention pride among her motives, advisedly.  She was proud of being the object of such attentions as I had now paid to her for years, because she fancied that, through those attentions, I, who, more or less, ruled everyone else in her sphere, had yielded to her the power of ruling me. The manner of my departure from England showed her too plainly that she had miscalculated her influence, and that the power, in her case, as in the case of others, was all on my side.  Hence the wound to her vanity, to which I have alluded.

“It was while this wound was still fresh that you met her, and appealed to her self-esteem in a new direction.  You must have seen clearly enough, that such proposals as yours far exceeded the most ambitious expectations formed by her father.  No man’s alliance could have lifted her much higher out of her own class:  she knew this, and from that knowledge married you—­married you for your station, for your name, for your great friends and connections, for your father’s money, and carriages, and fine houses; for everything, in short, but yourself.

“Still, in spite of the temptations of youth, wealth, and birth which your proposals held out to her, she accepted them at first (I made her confess it herself) with a secret terror and misgiving, produced by the remembrance of me.  These sensations, however, she soon quelled, or fancied she quelled; and these, it was now my last, best chance to revive.  I had a whole year for the work before me; and I felt certain of success.

“On your side, you had immense advantages.  You had social superiority; you had her father’s full approbation; and you were married to her.  If she had loved you for yourself, loved you for anything besides her own sensual interests, her vulgar ambition, her reckless vanity, every effort I could have made against you would have been defeated from the first.  But, setting this out of the question, in spite of the utter heartlessness of her attachment to you, if you had not consented to that condition of waiting a year for her after marriage; or, consenting to it, if you had broken it long before the year was out—­knowing, as you should have known, that in most women’s eyes a man is not dishonoured by breaking his promise, so long as he breaks it for a woman’s sake—­if,