He was undoubtedly in love with her when he married her; and the sweet face which had made him haunt Southbourne, to the neglect of his patients, would still, even after two years, have too much potency not to occasionally soften and give movement to the humanities which lay in him, hardened and drowned in drink. Though he had always, as long as people could remember him in Hanwitch, been what they called a dissipated man, he had managed somehow or other to get a living, to keep his landlord civil and wear good clothes. Ladies were not wanting who called him handsome. His manner, when sober, was courteous; his language correct; his fingers dexterous in pulling teeth out or putting teeth in. Those who knew anything of him knew that he never saved a penny; that were he to make ten thousand a year he would never save a penny; but they always said that, if he would only take a deep-rooted dislike to beer and brandy, go to bed at ten and rise at seven, attend to his business and give up smoking pipes in the streets, he might obtain enough money to enable him to keep a carriage and live in good style. How he met Dolly matters little. She was living in one room at Southbourne at that time, trying to obtain a livelihood by taking in needlework. She was miserably poor, with a little baby at her breast. Old Mr. Newcome, the rector, did his best for her, and allowed her what little he could afford out of his slender income, which enabled her to pay her rent. But she had to clothe and feed her child and herself, and the work she procured was scanty and poorly paid for. God knows how she managed to struggle through those days! Mr. Conway asked her to marry him, but she answered “No,” bitterly, for her love for Holdsworth was a passion. Then her only friend, Mr. Newcome, died; her health broke down; she was absolutely destitute; and so, for her baby’s sake--but shrinking from the marriage as one shrinks from the commission of an evil deed, and with a heart in her so heavy that nothing but her love for her child seemed to keep her alive--she gave her hand to Mr. Conway, and went to live with him at Hanwitch. She had no affection for the man. Her marriage was a bitter necessity, and she hated it and herself for that. She had no knowledge of Conway’s habits, though she had had penetration enough to miss certain moral qualifications which are to be felt and cannot be explained. Now she discovered that he was an intemperate, improvident man, hasty in his temper, selfish, and at the same time neglectful of his own interests.