“I will not weary you with unnecessary details; suffice it to say that within a month we were married, and the vows that were made ’till death should us part’ were eventually broken by the living death that consigned me to penal servitude. After our marriage ‘little Rosie’s’ nature gradually began to change; and the frankness and _naïveté_ that had so captivated me gradually gave way to habits and sentiments that astonished and alarmed me. I verily believe that, had I found in her the woman I hoped and believed her to be, I should truly have reformed, and given up that vile curse, drink. Instead of that, however, I found at my elbow one who was always ready to encourage me in the vice. Port was her favourite tipple, and though my own state seldom permitted me to judge of her consumption, still in my lucid intervals of sobriety I was astonished at the amount she consumed. Gradually we began to turn night into day, and nights of debauch regularly followed the few hours of daylight we seldom or ever saw. Even yet I had not abandoned all hope of reform. My conscience smote me when I was sober enough to heed it, and in hopes of avoiding temptation I hurried with my wife to Ireland; but even here she could not rest quiet. The cloven foot persisted in showing itself, and we were tabooed by the whole county. In this I found further cause for mortification—I who might have been looked up to and sought after. I tried to spare my wife’s feelings by concealing the real cause of our existence being ignored; but, fool that I was, I gave way to her importunings, and actually called on those who had avoided us. The well-merited reward of my temerity was not long in coming. Some of the county families returned our cards by post, whilst others sent them back by a servant; and at a subscription ball that took place not long after we received the cut dead. This filled up the cup of my humiliation, and I rushed back to London. I had realised the fact that virtue won’t herd with vice. “A cousin about this time made his appearance, and gradually became a daily visitor; and had my muddled faculties been more capable of forming an opinion, I might have been puzzled how a well-dressed and apparently gentlemanly man could be the nephew of either the blind father or the bed-ridden mother. Gradually, however, my suspicions were aroused, and I employed a detective to watch them both. He fulfilled his duty, alas! too well, and I received incontestable proof that my wife was a —, and that the ‘cousin’ was a man with whom she had lived for years. A sickly child, too, that frequently came to the house, and whom she often told me, with tears in her eyes, was her ‘dead sister’s,’ I had reason to suspect was a much nearer relative. But my feelings outstride my discretion. I’m again going too fast, and surely you’ve heard enough?” I begged him to continue, for I was deeply interested in his tale.