the first year of our married life, and during the five years which this lasted our relations to each other were cold and frequently strained. She came to look upon me as a hard, calculating man-of-the-world, who had little affection to spare except upon himself, and I think that her very orthodox opinions of right and wrong ultimately made me look upon her as a narrow-minded and distinctly milk-and-water kind of person. Then, at the end of that time, she made a bosom friend of Estelle Martin—a woman slightly older than herself—and with this woman I fell desperately in love.
You will say after reading these papers: "How ridiculous! This man who was selfish to the bone; who stayed his hand at nothing; who killed without scruple, who robbed with joy, this blackguard d'Escombe to fall in love—bosh!"
But it was so. She was a very beautiful woman—stately and calm, with that red-brown hair beloved of the Venetian painters, and the violet eyes and perfect contour of face which you only find in Ireland. So I lost my head completely.
At first she hardly noticed me, although she was constantly in my house, but the time
