And it was this one point which, overbalancing all the rest, ruined our home, lost her my father's love and her friends' respect, and was the cause of her own sufferings, unhappiness, and early death. As soon as fortune and success began to shine ever so feebly on my father's labours, there did not lack the usual flatterers to his wife, and panderers to her unhappy weakness. In a terribly short time, by the aid of thoughtless, good-natured evil-doers and intentional malice, this weakness developed into absolute and confirmed intemperance, which it seemed as though nothing could check. With intemperance came the long train of grievous consequences; easy good nature became extravagant folly, and was soon followed by the alienation of real friends and a ruined home. My father was gentleness and forbearance itself, but his life was bitterly poisoned; he had his wife treated medically, and sent to a hydropathic establishment, but all to no purpose. When our home was finally broken up in 1870, and the closest retrenchment was necessary, my father decided that it was utterly impossible to do that with dignity as long as my mother remained in London; so she and we two girls--my brother was at school--went to board with my grandfather at Midhurst, Sussex. It was intended as a merely temporary arrangement, and had it proved beneficial to my mother we should, when better times came, have had a reunited home; but, alas! it was not to be. At first my father came fairly frequently to Midhurst, but there was no improvement, and so his visits became fewer and fewer; they brought him no pleasure, but merely renewed the acuteness of his suffering. At length he, always thoughtful for those about him and recognising the terrible strain upon us his daughters in the life we were then leading, arranged for us each to spend a month alternately with him at his London lodgings, but not continuously, as he was anxious not to separate us. Sometimes it was contrived for us both to be in London together, and these were indeed sun-shiny days. We wrote letters for him, and did what we could, and he made us happy by persuading us that we were his secretaries and really useful to him; we tried to be, but I fear our desires and his loving acceptance of our work went far beyond its real merits. With time my mother became a confirmed invalid, and in May 1877 she died very unexpectedly from heart disease engendered by alcoholism.