And yet how could he cut the tie which bound them?
He had broken other such bonds as these; but the gentle La Valliere had shrunk into a convent at the very first glance which had told her of waning love.

That was true affection.

But this woman would struggle hard, fight to the bitter end, before she would quit the position which was so dear to her.

She spoke of her wrongs.

What were her wrongs?
In his intense selfishness, nurtured by the eternal flattery which was the very air he breathed, he could not see that the fifteen years of her life which he had absorbed, or the loss of the husband whom he had supplanted, gave her any claim upon him.