He did not venture to reply; he could not
tell her that she deceived herself even here; that it was not her
sorrows only which so affected him, but the remembered agonies of his
own mother, whom he did not doubt the capricious villany of this very
earl, under the name of Sackville (a name that had struck like a
death-bolt to the heart of Thaddeus when he first heard his mother
utter it), had devoted to a life of uncomplaining but ceaseless self-
reproach. And had he derived his existence from such a man--the
reprobate husband of Lady Tinemouth! The conviction humbled him,
crushed him, and trod him to the earth. He did not look up, and the
countess resumed:
"It would be impossible, my dear sir, to describe to you the gradual
changes which assured me that I had lost the heart of my husband.
Before the end of the winter he left me again, and I saw him no more
until that frightful hour in which he struck me to the ground.
"The good earl came into Monmouthshire about six weeks after I parted
with my lord. I was surprised and rejoiced to see my kind father-in-
law; but how soon were my emotions driven into a different course! He
revealed to me that during Lord Harwold's first visit to town he had
been in the habit of spending entire evenings with Lady Olivia Lovel."
'This woman,' added he, 'is the most artful of her sex. In spite of
her acknowledged dishonor, you well know my deceased father would
gladly have married her to my son; and now it seems, actuated by
revenge, she resents Lord Harwold's refusal of her hand by seducing
him from his wife.
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