We read in Plutarch how Cleomenes, having wedded the fair Agiatis, wife of Agis, after the death of the latter, did grow fondly enamoured of the same by reason of her surpassing beauty. He did not fail to note the great sadness she lay under for her first husband’s loss; and felt so great compassion for her, as that he made no grievance of the love she still bare her former husband, and the affectionate memory she did cherish of him. In fact, himself would often turn the discourse to her earlier life, asking her facts and details as to the pleasures that had erstwhile passed betwixt them twain. He had her not for long however, for she soon died, to his extreme sorrow. ’Tis a thing not a few worthy husbands do in the case of fair widows they have married. But ’tis time now surely, methinks, to be making an end, if ever end is to be made. Other ladies there be which declare they do much better love their second husbands than their first. “For as to our first husbands,” some of these have told me, “these we do more often than not take at the orders of our King or the Queen our mistress, or at the command of our fathers, mothers, kinsmen, or guardians, not by our own unbiased wish. On the other hand, once widowed and thus free and emancipated, we do exercise such choice as seemeth us good, and take new mates solely for our own good will and pleasure, for delight of love and the satisfaction of our heart’s desire.” Of a surety there would seem to be good reason here, were it not that very oft, as the old-time proverb saith,—“Love that begins with a ring, oft ends with a halter.” So every day do we see instances and examples where women thinking to be well treated of their husbands, the which they have in some cases rescued from justice and the gibbet, from poverty and misery and the hangman, and saved alive, have been sore beaten, bullied, cruelly entreated and often done to death of the same,—a just punishment of heaven for their base ingratitude toward their former husbands, that were only too good to them, and of whom they had never a good word to say.