It may be as well to state that she had never informed her husband of the existence of that phenomenon, although he was aware of his wife's former connection with the Count,--Mrs.Hayes, in their matrimonial quarrels, invariably taunting him with accounts of her former splendour and happiness, and with his own meanness of taste in condescending to take up with his Excellency's leavings.
She determined, then (but as yet had not confided her determination to her husband), she would have her boy; although in her seven years' residence within twenty miles of him she had never once thought of seeing him: and the kind reader knows that when his excellent lady determines on a thing--a shawl, or an opera-box, or a new carriage, or twenty-four singing-lessons from Tamburini, or a night at the "Eagle Tavern," City Road, or a ride in a 'bus to Richmond and tea and brandy-and-water at "Rose Cottage Hotel"-- the reader, high or low, knows that when Mrs.Reader desires a thing have it she will; you may just as well talk of avoiding her as of avoiding gout, bills, or grey hairs--and that, you know, is impossible.

I, for my part, have had all three--ay, and a wife too.
I say that when a woman is resolved on a thing, happen it will; if husbands refuse, Fate will interfere (flectere si nequeo, etc.; but quotations are odious).

And some hidden power was working in the case of Mrs.Hayes, and, for its own awful purposes, lending her its aid.
Who has not felt how he works--the dreadful conquering Spirit of Ill?
Who cannot see, in the circle of his own society, the fated and foredoomed to woe and evil?
Some call the doctrine of destiny a dark creed; but, for me, I would fain try and think it a consolatory one.

It is better, with all one's sins upon one's head, to deem oneself in the hands of Fate, than to think--with our fierce passions and weak repentances; with our resolves so loud, so vain, so ludicrously, despicably weak and frail; with our dim, wavering, wretched conceits about virtue, and our irresistible propensity to wrong,--that we are the workers of our future sorrow or happiness.

If we depend on our strength, what is it against mighty circumstance?
If we look to ourselves, what hope have we?
Look back at the whole of your life, and see how Fate has mastered you and it.