Their eyes just met. ‘You needn’t think that it cost me any suffering. Not on her account; not because I had lost my wife. I never felt so glad, before or since, as on the day when it was all over, and I found myself a free man again. I suffered only in thinking how I had fooled away some of the best years of my life for a woman who despised me from the first, and was as heartless as the stones of the street. I found her in beggary, or close upon it. I made myself her slave--it’s only the worthless women who accept from a man, who expect from him, such slavish worship as she had from me. I gave her clothing; she scarcely thanked me, but I thought myself happy. I gave her a comfortable home, such as she hadn’t known for years; for a reward she mocked at my plain tastes and quiet ways--but I thought no ill of it--could see nothing in it but a girlish, lighthearted sort of way that seemed one of her merits. As long as we lived together, she pretended to be an affectionate wife; I should think no one ever matched her in hypocrisy. But the first chance she had--husband, children, home, all flung aside in a moment. Then I saw her in the true light, and understood all at once what a blind fool I had been.’ He breathed quickly and painfully. Mary sat without a movement. ‘I thought I had done a great thing in marrying a wife that was born above me. Her father had been a country gentleman; horse-racing and such things had brought him down, and from her twelfth year his daughter lived--I never quite knew how, but on charity of some kind. She grew up without trying to earn her own living; she thought herself too good for that, thought she had a claim to be supported, because as a child she was waited upon by servants. When I asked her once if she couldn’t have done something, she stared at me and laughed in my face. For all that she was glad enough to marry a man of my sort--rough and uneducated as I was. She always reminded me of it, though--that I had no education; I believe she thought that she had a perfect right to throw over such a husband, whenever she chose. Afterwards, I saw very well that _her_ education didn’t amount to much. How could it, when she learnt nothing after she was twelve? She was living with very poor people who came from my part of the country--that’s how I met her. The father led some sort of blackguard life in London, but had no money for her, nor yet for his other girl, who went into service, I was told, and perhaps made herself a useful, honest woman. He died in a hospital, and he was buried at my expense--not three months before his daughter went off and left me.’ ‘You will never tell your children,’ said Mary, when there had been a long pause. ‘I’ve often thought it would only be right if I told them. I’ve often thought, the last year or two, that Nancy ought to know. It might make her think, and do her good.’ ‘No, no,’ returned the other hurriedly. ‘Never let her know of it--never. It might do her much harm.’