My father was a bad man. He was my mother's worst enemy; and he was never
my friend.
The little that I know of the world tells me that it is not the common
lot in life of women to marry the object of their first love. A sense of
duty had compelled my mother to part with the man who had won her heart,
in the first days of her maidenhood; and my father had discovered it,
after his marriage. His insane jealousy foully wronged the truest wife,
the most long-suffering woman that ever lived. I have no patience to
write of it. For ten miserable years she suffered her martyrdom; she
lived through it, dear angel, sweet suffering soul, for my sake. At her
death, my father was able to gratify his hatred of the son whom he had
never believed to be his own child. Under pretence of preferring the
foreign system of teaching, he sent me to a school in France. My
education having been so far completed, I was next transferred to a
German University. Never again did I see the place of my birth, never did
I get a letter from home, until the family lawyer wrote from Trimley
Deen, requesting me to assume possession of my house and lands, under the
entail.
I should not even have known that my father had taken a second wife but
for some friend (or enemy)--I never discovered the person--who sent me a
newspaper containing an announcement of the marriage.
When we saw each other for the first time, my stepmother and I met
necessarily as strangers.
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