We had been married about two months, when I discovered that my husband was expecting letters from England; he was evidently anxious about these. And why? He had described himself to my family as being without a single relation on earth, except the uncle from whom he had brought recommendatory letters; he had made a fair settlement on me, and my father had placed before him a due account of his finances and my prospects. My father was then a wealthy landholder in Albany; but, unfortunately, he had placed the greater part of his savings in one of those great banking-houses in India, which failed so suddenly as to ruin thousands. My family had returned to Annerley, and my husband and I had just taken up our abode at B--, when the fatal news of my father's heavy loss reached us. I had already had some experience of Lyle's violence of temper on his resuming his official duties: there are some men, you know, whose tempers are more violent than hasty, who can curb their passions when obliged to bend before a superior power, and whose wrath finds vent for itself at home; but I was unprepared for the storm that burst on my devoted head at the announcement by letter of our pecuniary misfortunes. He accused my father of wilfully deceiving him; he bestowed the most revolting epithets on my mother, and laughed bitterly at my having believed he could love "such a pale-faced, forsaken, meek-spirited little idiot for herself alone." But you would not have me repeat all the degrading and terrible imprecations that fell from his lips. My first thought was of the pain this sad state of things would cause my father and mother. In the course of a few days my father, rode over to see us. It was, at first, Lyle's policy to appear on the best possible terms with me. He had no intention of openly disgracing himself, and it was also very plain that he was in deep anxiety about news from England.