I was
weakness itself in all that concerned her."
"And she loved you, papa?" said Clarissa softly. "I am sure she must have
loved you."
"That is a question that I have never answered with any satisfaction to
myself. I thought she loved me. She liked me well enough, I believe, till
that man crossed her path, and might have learnt to like me better as she
grew older and wiser, and rose above the slavery of frivolous pleasures.
But, in the most evil hour of her life, she met Temple Fairfax, and from
that hour her heart was turned from me. We were travelling, trying to
recover from the expenses of a house perpetually full of my wife's set;
and it was at Florence that we first encountered the Colonel. He had just
returned from India, had been doing great things there, and was considered
rather a distinguished person in Florentine society. I need not stop to
describe him. His son is like him. He and I became friends, and met almost
daily. It was not till a year afterwards that I knew how pitiful a dupe of
this man's treachery I had been from the very first. We were still in Italy
when I made my first discovery; it was one that let in the light upon his
character, but did not seriously involve my wife. We fought, and I was
wounded. When I recovered, I brought my wife home to Arden. Our year's
retrenchment had left me poorer than when I left home. Your mother's
beauty was a luxury not to be maintained more cheaply at Florence than in
Yorkshire.
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