"I have always thought, sir," she said, "that you would marry again. It
is a duty which you owe to your wealth and position. That your choice
should have fallen upon me is an honour of which I am very sensible."
It will thus be seen that in the alliance which Pauline and I proposed
there was to be no love-making. The bargain was one that might have
been made in the course of De Decker's business. I was to give Pauline
my wealth and name, in return for which she promised to become my wife,
and to undertake the management of my household. It was a shameful
bargain, and I was well served for my part in it.
We had not been married a month before each of us began to observe in
the other an incompatibility of temper which made any kind of agreement
between us, even on the most trivial matters, impossible. Pauline
declared that I brought the manners of the forecastle into her
drawing-room, while the social inanities to which she devoted most of
her time angered me into upbraiding her with her frivolity and lack of
common sense. These mutual recriminations soon led us into a condition
of life which destroyed all prospect of peace and contentment in our
home.
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