Hugh Mainwaring at once deserted me, without even a word of explanation or of farewell, and, as if that were not enough, on more than one occasion he openly insulted me in the presence of his father, on the streets of London.
I realized then for the first time that I cared for him, coward that he was, though I did not love him as he thought,--had I loved him, I would have killed him, then and there.

Mad with chagrin and rage, I married your father, partly for the position he could give me--for I did not believe that he, the elder son and his father's favorite, would be disowned--and partly to show his brother and their father that I still held, as I supposed, the winning hand.
On my wedding-day I vowed that I would yet bring Hugh Mainwaring to my feet as my lover, and when, shortly afterwards, your father was disinherited in his favor, my desire for revenge was only intensified.

I redoubled my efforts to win him, and I found it no difficult task; he was even more willing to play the lover to his brother's wife than to the penniless girl whom he had known, with no possessions but her beauty and wit.

At first, our meetings were clandestine; but we soon grew reckless, and in one or two instances I openly boasted of my conquest, hoping thereby to arouse his father's displeasure against him also.

But in that I reckoned wrong.