He was
deeply stung and the thought of her sufferings in the false position
where his selfishness had placed her, haunted him for a time beyond
his endurance--for of all things he hated suffering, and of all
sufferings remorse is the worst. Hence, where a wiser man might
have repented, he rushed into dissipation, whose scorching wind
swept away not only the healing dews of his sorrow, but the tender
buds of new life that had begun to mottle the withering tree of his
nature. The desire after better things which had, under his wife's
genial influence, begun to pass into effort, not only vanished
utterly in the shameless round of evil distraction, but its memory
became a mockery to the cynical spirit that arose behind the vanishing
angel of repentance; and he was soon in the condition of the man
from whom the exorcised demon had gone but to find his seven worse
companions.
Reduced at length to straits--almost to want, he had married the
mother of Florimel, to whom for a time he endeavoured to conduct
himself in some measure like a gentleman. For this he had been
rewarded by a decrease in the rate of his spiritual submergence,
but his bedraggled nature could no longer walk without treading
on its own plumes; and the poor lady who had bartered herself for
a lofty alliance, speedily found her mistake a sad one and her life
uninteresting, took to repining and tears, alienated her husband
utterly, and died of a sorrow almost too selfish to afford even a
suggestion of purifying efficacy.
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