Pagina 37 de 1294

He used to beat her at the end: and although she paid him back,

of which I have authentic documentary evidence, to this day she

speaks of him with tears and she throws him up to me; and I am

glad, I am glad that, though only in imagination, she should

think of herself as having once been happy.... And she was left

at his death with three children in a wild and remote district

where I happened to be at the time; and she was left in such

hopeless poverty that, although I have seen many ups and downs of

all sort, I don't feel equal to describing it even. Her relations

had all thrown her off. And she was proud, too, excessively

proud.... And then, honoured sir, and then, I, being at the time

a widower, with a daughter of fourteen left me by my first wife,

offered her my hand, for I could not bear the sight of such

suffering. You can judge the extremity of her calamities, that

she, a woman of education and culture and distinguished family,

should have consented to be my wife. But she did!