"She likes to be there herself. I think it would be well to send her back to Kendal at once. There is no necessity for a nurse now, and the boy ought to be learning how to care for himself--you did so before you were his age. And really, Robert, keeping a maid for Dora is a most unnecessary expense; it also makes a great deal of trouble among the house-servants. The girl is always quarrelling with them about her mistress, and pitying them about their mistress. I fancy Dora makes an equal of her." "That is not Dora's way, mother. And the girl is not only a nurse, she attends to our rooms also." "The house chambermaid could do that." "Could she do it the first thing in the morning?" "Do you think Dora's rooms ought to be attended to before mine?" "Dora likes them to be put in order early, and I am willing to pay for her wish." "More fool you! I dare be bound, she cleaned her own room before you married her." "If she had married Lord Thurson, instead of me, he would have given her a dozen maids had she wished them." "Do you think I believe that romancing about Lord Thurson? I am not such a born idiot. You cannot persuade me, that two men in the world wanted to marry Dora Newton. _Hout, tout!_ Men are feckless enough, but not that crazy." Such conversations as this occurred usually in the library after dinner where Mrs. Campbell now made a point of visiting her son. For this end, she had conquered her dislike both of the room and his tobacco, and there she carried all the small gossip and worries of the household. And Robert soon began to enjoy this visit, and the tale-bearing suspicions and arguments that enlivened it. It pleased him to feel that he knew all that was going on in the house, and he also liked to know whether Theodora had been out or not, whether she had dressed for calling or walking, and, if she had not left the house, how she had been occupied, what callers she had had, and how many letters she had received. He was not even averse to knowing the post-office stamps of these letters. And when men indulge this petty weakness, they soon learn to enjoy its humbling cruelties and its mean triumphs, hardly considering that under such a disintegrating process all domestic happiness crumbles inwardly away. Thus Robert grew indifferent to the woman he so pitilessly analyzed, and fell gradually into the godless, thankless quiescence of getting used to happiness. It was then easy to regard what had once been a miraculous blessing as a thing monotonous and commonplace.