“I remember the day she first suggested to me that I should buy Cheriton Chase when it came into the market. I was beginning to be employed in important cases, and to get big fees marked upon my briefs, and I had taken silk. I had made my name, and I was saving money. Yet the suggestion that I should buy a large estate was too wild for any one but a woman to have made. From that hour, however, it was Evelyn’s _idée fixe_. She had a passionate love for her birth-place, an overweening pride in her race and name. She urged me to accumulate money—the estate would be sacrificed at half its value, perhaps,—would go for an old song. She became rigidly economical, would hardly allow herself a new gown, and her keenest delight was in the deposit notes I brought her, as my money accumulated at the Union Bank. She had no idea of investments, or interest for my accumulations. Her notions about money were a child’s notions—the idea of saving a large sum to buy the desire of her heart; and the desire of her heart was Cheriton Chase. “God knows I was honest and earnest enough in those days. I meant to buy that estate, for her sake, if it was possible to be done. I meant to marry her directly she was free to become my wife. My fidelity had not wavered after a union of ten years and more—but Darcy was very far from dying. He had hunted out his wife in her quiet retreat, had threatened and annoyed her, and I had been obliged to buy him off by paying his passage to Canada—where he had been quartered with his regiment years before, and which he pretended would open a new field for him. Our case, so far as he was concerned, seemed hopeless, and I was beginning to feel the darkness of the outlook, when I made Maria Morales’ acquaintance. “It was the old, old story, Theodore. God forbid you should ever go through that hackneyed experience. Just as the old chain was beginning to drag heavily, a new face appeared upon my pathway—a girlish face, bright with promise and hope. I saw the opportunity of a union which would smooth my way to a great position—crown the edifice of my fortune, give me a wife of whom I might be proud. Could I ever have been proud of the woman who had sacrificed her good name for my sake? I was bound to her by every consideration of honour and duty. But there was the fatal stain across both our lives. I could not take her into society without the fear of hearing malignant whispers as we passed. However well these social secrets may be kept, there is always some enemy to hunt them out, and the antecedents of James Dalbrook’s wife would have been public property.