"I have known Mr. Thomas Blake for many years. We were once secretly engaged to be married, but my father broke the matter off, and I married Mr. Davenport, who was much older than I--twenty-five or twenty-six years older. When Mr. Blake was a very young man he met Mr. Davenport abroad, so my late husband told me. It was Mr. Blake introduced my late husband to me. At that time Mr. Blake and I were secretly engaged. After this engagement was known to my father and broken off by him, as far as his forbidding me to see Mr. Blake, I still communicated with Mr. Blake and received letters from him. These were surreptitious communications. "Mr. Davenport then proposed to me and I refused him. Shortly after this I received a letter from Mr. Blake, saying there was no use in our continuing to hope we should one day be married, as neither of us had any money or the chance of getting any, and consequently we ought to make up our minds to resign ourselves to fate. Shortly after this Mr. Davenport proposed to me again and I accepted him. We were married a few months later, and have most of the time since then resided at Mr. Davenport's place near Kilcash, in the county of Waterford. "The terms upon which Mr. Blake gave me up will be told you by himself. I had nothing to do with that bargain. After an absence of a little time from Ireland, Mr. Blake came back and stayed occasionally in Kilcash, close to which my husband's house was. I saw little of Mr. Blake. My husband met him now and then. In those days I believe Mr. Blake gave me up solely for the reason mentioned in the letter of which I have spoken. Subsequently I found out other considerations had been working in Mr. Blake's mind. "My marriage with Mr. Davenport was not a love-match. A variety of reasons urged me into marrying him. Among these reasons I cannot count love. I have diligently, conscientiously done my duty by him for ten years. I never pretended or professed to love him. I respected his moral code, but his social and intellectual faculties did not impress, did not interest me, and certainly did not gain my esteem. We lived in peace and comfort. He never once quarrelled with me--I never with him. "I said I had a reason for not going down immediately after Mr. Blake left the house the other night. My reason was that generally after a visit from Mr. Blake, Mr. Davenport was unpleasantly excited with, as I even then thought, a lingering feeling of jealousy. At such times he never said anything harsh or unpleasant of Mr. Blake or of myself, but he was certain to become feverishly angry with some one or other; and believing that after such a journey, and with so bad a cough, it would be injurious to him to excite himself unduly, I kept back awhile.