When she handed this locket to my father it contained a portrait of myself--a small head carefully cut from a photograph--and she declared that I had forced the likeness upon her, and had insisted upon her wearing it. She said that she had endeavoured by every means in her power to wean me from my guilty passion; that a dozen times she had been on the point of exposing me to her husband, but had always been prevented by a feeling of tenderness for him and by a hope, which grew fainter and fainter every day, that I might awake from my folly; that no woman had ever been subjected to such cruel persecution and had ever suffered so much as she had; and that, at length, unable to keep the horrible secret to herself, she had resolved to impart it to her husband, and throw herself upon his protection. Nor was this all. I had threatened, if she would not receive me as her lover, that I would bring the most shameful charges against her, and by the aid of bribed assistants, whom I should call as witnesses, blast her reputation and ruin her happiness. The very words I had used to her in our interview on the previous day were repeated to me by my father, so artfully twisted as to render them powerless against herself and conclusive against me. From this brief description you will be able to form some idea of the position in which I was placed during this interview with my father. I was allowed no opportunity of defence. My father's wife had contrived to rouse to its utmost pitch the chivalry of his nature in her behalf. I doubt whether my father at that time would have received any evidence, however conclusive, against her, and whether, in the peculiar frame of mind into which she had worked him he would not have accepted every proof of her guilt as proof of her virtue. His recital of his wife's wrongs being at an end, he addressed himself to me in terms so violent, so unfatherly, so unjust, that I lost my self-command. Such a scene as followed is rare, I hope, between father and son. He discarded me; he swore he would never look upon me as a son; would never think of me; would never receive me. He forbade me ever to address or refer to him; he banished me from his house and his heart; he flung money at me, as he would have done at a beggar; he was in every way so insulting that my feelings as a man overcame my duty as a son; and we used such words to each other as men can scarcely ever forget or forgive. To such extremes and opposites can a false woman drive men ordinarily just, and kind, and temperate.