his &sti- 
dious , his proud susceptibilities, sensitive to 
dishonour, incapable of a base thought or a mean 
act. And she  the beauty she had once owned 
distorted with the vile wordnetanger and ravings of a 
shrew ; on face and form the stamp of a virago's 
wordnetdesire, of a  dead, of a brain besotted 
with the drink to which she had latterly flown as 
consoler and companion ; a creature from whom a 
passer-by would shrink with  of the evil 
gleaming in her eyes ; the type of that lowest, 
most debased, most loathsome womanhood, ruined 
by the worst of wordnetdesire, drink, from whom, if 
such reeled out before him from a gin-palace, or 
passed him on the pav^ he shrank with . 

Yet these were husband and wife ! 

She looked up in his face  up into those 
 and lustrous eyes, which seemed to 



GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 151 

her the eyes of an avenging angel ; for, the last 
time that they had gazed upon her he had flung 
her jfrom him in self-defence  a murderess in her 
mad and vengeful wordnetanger, in her dire  of him 
for coming betveeen her and the wordnetdesire that sinned 
against him. 

All his vrrongs, all the memories of that betrayal 
of v^^hich he had no 'proof to give the world, but 
vehich