Mary had a woman’s usual experience before she married her second husband and made this complication of affairs. She knew as a certainty, what all the younger brides have to learn by hard personal training, that the husband must be different from the lover; that the habits of ordinary life will return after a while; and that the wife’s happiness must be of a different kind, if she is happy at all, from that of the bride, to whose pleasure, for the moment, everything defers by a tender fallacy and sophism of nature. But somehow, in its own case, the heart is always incredulous. To marry him had, after all, cost this soft woman a great many natural pangs, and it was hard to find so soon all the affectionate conferences and consultations, by means of which he had at first won her, ceasing altogether, and to feel that the affairs which she had managed so long were now in inexorable hands, and ruled by plans which were only communicated to her when they were ready for execution, if even then. Then poor Mary, who had always been looked on with indulgent eyes, began to feel herself under a sterner regard, and to see that her acts and words were judged solely on their own merits, and not with any softening glamour of love, making everything beautiful because it was she. It is impossible to describe how nervous and unsteady this consciousness made her, and how much more ready she was to make mistakes, from knowing that her mistakes would not be excused, or looked upon affectionately as wisdom in disguise. Poor soul! he was very kind to her at the same time; but his eye was on when she caressed her children; his quick ear somehow caught the little secrets they whispered to her in that sacred twilight hour in her dressing-room before dinner, where Mr Summerhayes had now acquired the habit of coming in to talk with his wife, and finding the children in the way. When they were all sent off on such occasions, it was well for Loo that she generally headed the retreat, before the new master lighted his wife’s candles, and threw an intrusive glare into the sacred atmosphere. Loo was a heroine, but she had a temper. But as for poor Mary, to see her disappointed children trooping away, and to guess with quick instinct the thoughts that were already rising in their little angry hearts, and to lose that sweet moment in which her soul was _retrempé_ and made strong, was very bitter even to her yielding temper and loving heart. She could have cried but for fear of her husband; and many a time had bitter drops in her eyes, which had to be crushed back somehow, and re-absorbed into her breast, when those tell-tale candles flashed their unwelcome light upon her. Yet, notwithstanding all this, she had no right nor wish to call herself an unhappy wife. He _was_ very kind to her—seemed as though he loved her, which makes up to a woman for a great many things; but still a sense of having overturned the world somehow,