His own experience of married life, essayed in early years and
happily brought to a conclusion after a probation of a very short
time, had, as has been hinted, not been a happy one. He had very
deeply felt; some five-and-forty years ago, that nothing in the
Signora Fortini's life had become her like the leaving of it. And
during all those years of widowhood, the remembrance of that first
burning of his fingers had sufficed to make the old gentleman a
consistent misogynist.
"Ah, here is another specimen of women's work," he thought to
himself, as he observed the utter wretchedness of the Marchese's
appearance, and the traces in him of a day spent in misery. "And he,
too, who had escaped for fifty years! If I had avoided the springes
for fifty years, I don't think I should have been caught at last.
Maybe, it is all the worse for coming to a man so late. Now here is
this man, who had everything the world could give to make his
happiness, wrecked, ruined, destroyed, blasted by the sight of a
painted piece of woman's flesh, and the lure of a pair of devil-
instructed eyes. And he knows that it is ruin. He knows which is the
evil, and which the good, and yet is so besotted, that he has not
the power to take the one and leave the other. Is not the sight of
the unhappy wretch, as he sits cowering there, afraid, evidently
afraid to meet my eye, a warning and a caution?"
And, in truth, the appearance of the Marchese might have been held,
to justify these reflections of the lawyer, who was right in
supposing that no tidings of what had happened had reached the
Marchese since he had parted from him after their interview that
morning.
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