INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The following slight and unelaborated sketchof a very commonplace and everyday tragedywill, I am aware, meet with the unqualifieddisapproval of the 'superior' sex. They willassert, with much indignant emphasis, that thecharacter of 'Lord Carlyon' is an impossibleone, and that such a 'cad' as he is shown tobe never existed. Anticipating these remarks,I have to say in reply that the two chiefpersonages in my story, namely, 'Lord Carlyon'and his wife, are drawn strictly from the life;and, that though both the originals have someyears since departed from this scene of earthlycontest and misunderstanding, so that mydelineation of their characters can no longergrieve or offend either, the 'murder of Delicia'was consummated at the hands of her husbandprecisely in the way I have depicted it.

There are thousands of such 'murders' dailyhappening among us—murders which are notconsidered 'cruelty' in the eyes of the law.There are any number of women who worknight and day with brain and hand to supportuseless and brainless husbands; women whoselove never falters, whose patience never tires,and whose tenderness is often rewarded onlyby the most callous neglect and ingratitude.I do not speak of the countless cases amongthe hard-working millions whom we elect tocall the 'lower classes,' where the wife, workingfrom six in the morning till ten at night, has tosee her hard earnings snatched from her by her'better' half and spent at the public-house instrong drink, despite the fact that there is nofood at home, and that innocent little childrenare starving. These instances are so frequentthat they have almost ceased to awaken ourinterest, much less our sympathy. In my storyI allude principally to the 'upper' ranks, wherethe lazy noodle of an aristocrat spends his time,first, in accumulating debts, and then in lookingabout for a woman with money to pay them—awoman upon whose income he can afterwardslive comfortably for the rest of his worthlesslife. To put it bluntly and plainly, a greatmajority of the men of the present day wantwomen to keep them. It is not a manly ornoble desire; but as the kind of men I meanhave neither the courage nor the intelligence tofight the world for themselves, it is, I suppose,natural to such inefficient weaklings that theyshould,—seeing the fierce heat and contest ofcompetition in every branch of modernlabour,—gladly sneak behind a woman's petticoats toescape the general fray. But the point towhich I particularly wish to call the attentionof the more thoughtful of my readers is thatthese very sort of men (when they have securedthe ignoble end of their ambition, namely, therich woman to live upon, under matrimonialsufferance) are the first to run down women'swork, women's privileges, women's attainmentsand women's honour. The man who oweshis dinner to his wife's unremitting toil isoften to be heard speaking of the 'uselessness'of women, their frivolity and general

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