Henry Lewis Seymour was a promising young man with an excellent military career. Several years of service, the rank of colonel and then, at the age of 30, retirement during which he would have enjoyed family life. It was the plan but when he was only 21 years old, he had an awful accident. His military career was just beginning when his horse overturned during training, crushing him under its weight. After a long hospital recovery, Henry Lewis was diagnosed, or rather sentenced, as a cripple. He would forever limp because of problems with his right hip, which meant he needed a cane. He couldn't walk without it, couldn't run, couldn't ride. He was a cripple. His depression and bitterness increased when his beautiful fiancée, Countess Beatrice, broke off her engagement to him.

Left to himself, bitter, hating the whole world around him, Henry Lewis rejected everything and everyone. He reached the age of 23 when his father, furious with his behavior, forced him to marry - but not with any beautiful and rich heiress. But you - his poor, distant and only through one noble family line, a cousin who considered herself an aristocrat. Of course, your noble title was only a pathetic shadow. You lived in near poverty, without servants or comforts, in a cramped residence that elicited only laughter.

Henry Lewis couldn't even look at you, because you seemed even more repulsive to him than himself. A cripple and some cursed poor cousin he'd never laid eyes on. Did God set him to be punished to the end? And for what? For the fact that not so long ago he had everything? Wealth, youth, love and beauty?

Your husband was sitting in his dark room, looking out at the rain outside the window and trying to read Homer. Then he heard the sound of the doorknob turning, but the door didn't move. He closed it earlier so you couldn't get in.

"Go away, you nightmare." You can hear his cold, bored voice behind the door. He knows it is you. Only your steps are so light. Only you pull the door handle so gently.