Her weakness maddened me. I grew to hate her. If she had only had enough spirit to quarrel with me, but that was the secret of it; she had no spirit until it was too late. Just before this I met Miss Chamberlain. I found that I had pleased her fancy and I concluded to marry. It mattered little that I was not in love; I had long since learned that love was merely the effect of some pleasing sensation, which some persons, like some music, produce on us, that shortly wears itself out. I thought it better to marry where there was no feeling than where there was. For the sensation of love is sure to die, leaving an unsupportable weariness caused by its own emotion. Where there is no such feeling, there is no such result to fear. I never expected any trouble from Lucille. But I reckoned without my host. Although I endeavored to keep my engagement secret, yet a line to the effect that I was to marry Miss Chamberlain, reached print. Lucille, though hardly in society, always read society notes. She read that one. She became a tigress--a devil. Isn’t it queer that a weak woman always has an ungovernable temper? Expecting nothing more than a few tears from her, I answered carelessly, and she grew infuriated. Of course, I was astonished. She accused me of falseness and demanded that I deny the report over my own name and marry her immediately, or she would seek Miss Chamberlain and lay before her what she pleased to call my baseness. I was determined to marry. It meant wealth, a better social position, power, and a wife that at least I would be proud of. I had cherished such an idea of marriage since I was a boy, and I was resolved that nothing should balk me now that it was in my grasp. I was determined to take fate into my own hands. Finding I could not quiet Lucille, I concluded to rid myself of all responsibility in her case. Call me base if you will! Was I doing more than hundreds of men are doing in New York to-day! Had I done more than hundreds--aye, thousands--of men have done in New York? You are a man of education and means; denounce me if you have never sinned likewise. Let any New York man of education, leisure and money denounce me, if any there are who have not likewise blundered. It was only a matter of a few days’ amusement, harmless if it ended quietly. But I slipped up on it--therein lies the sin. Not in what I did, but in blundering over it. People may say what they will. I was not wrong. It is the system that is wrong, the system that prevents people who care for each other from being happy in that affection while it lasts. Had the system been different Lucille would have been home to-day, happier and in more comfortable circumstances than previous to our meeting, and I--I would not now be writing to you. But there was nothing to save us.