She had disgraced and ruined him.

Not once, but again and again he had forgiven her, under circumstances which degraded him in his own estimation, and in the estimation of his best friends.

On the last occasion when she left him, he had followed her to Montreal.
In a fit of drunken frenzy, she had freed him from her at last by self-destruction.

Her death affected his reason.

When he was discharged from the asylum, he spent his last miserable savings in placing a monument over her grave.