The woman loved him, that was the fact.

And, as we have shown in the previous chapter how John Hayes, a mean-spirited fellow as ever breathed, in respect of all other passions a pigmy, was in the passion of love a giant, and followed Mrs.Catherine with a furious longing which might seem at the first to be foreign to his nature; in the like manner, and playing at cross-purposes, Mrs.Hall had become smitten of the Captain; and, as he said truly, only liked him the better for the brutality which she received at his hands.

For it is my opinion, madam, that love is a bodily infirmity, from which humankind can no more escape than from small-pox; and which attacks every one of us, from the first duke in the Peerage down to Jack Ketch inclusive: which has no respect for rank, virtue, or roguery in man, but sets each in his turn in a fever; which breaks out the deuce knows how or why, and, raging its appointed time, fills each individual of the one sex with a blind fury and longing for some one of the other (who may be pure, gentle, blue-eyed, beautiful, and good; or vile, shrewish, squinting, hunchbacked, and hideous, according to circumstances and luck); which dies away, perhaps, in the natural course, if left to have its way, but which contradiction causes to rage more furiously than ever.

Is not history, from the Trojan war upwards and downwards, full of instances of such strange inexplicable passions?
Was not Helen, by the most moderate calculation, ninety years of age when she went off with His Royal Highness Prince Paris of Troy?
Was not Madame La Valliere ill-made, blear-eyed, tallow-complexioned, scraggy, and with hair like tow?
Was not Wilkes the ugliest, charmingest, most successful man in the world?
Such instances might be carried out so as to fill a volume; but cui bono?
Love is fate, and not will; its origin not to be explained, its progress irresistible: and the best proof of this may be had at Bow Street any day, where if you ask any officer of the establishment how they take most thieves, he will tell you at the houses of the women.
They must see the dear creatures though they hang for it; they will love, though they have their necks in the halter.

And with regard to the other position, that ill-usage on the part of the man does not destroy the affection of the woman, have we not numberless police-reports, showing how, when a bystander would beat a husband for beating his wife, man and wife fall together on the interloper and punish him for his meddling?
These points, then, being settled to the satisfaction of all parties, the reader will not be disposed to question the assertion that Mrs.Hall had a real affection for the gallant Count, and grew, as Mr.Brock was pleased to say, like a beefsteak, more tender as she was thumped.