Mrs. Peter had dropped a stitch while animadverting against Miss Susan Owens, from New York, and stopped a moment while she picked it up. It would be difficult to describe Ethelyn's emotions as she heard her own husband talked of as something marketable, which others than Susan Owens might covet. He was evidently the lion of the season. It was something to have a governor of Richard's reputation in the house, and the guests made the most of it, wishing he would join them in the parlor or on the piazza, and regretting that he stayed so constantly in his room. Many attempts were made to draw him out, Mrs. and Miss Owens, on the strength of their acquaintance in Washington, venturing to call upon him, and advising him to take more exercise. Miss Owens' voice was loud and clear, and Ethie heard it distinctly as the young lady talked and laughed with Richard, the hot blood coursing rapidly through her veins, and the first genuine pangs of jealousy she had ever felt creeping into her heart as she guessed what might possibly be in Miss Owens' mind. Many times she resolved to make herself known to him; but uncertainty as to how she might be received, and the remembrance of what Mrs. Van Buren had said with regard to the divorce, held her back; and so, with only a thin partition between them, and within sound of each other's footsteps, the husband and wife, so long estranged from each other, lived on, day after day, Richard spending most of his time in his room, and Ethelyn managing so adroitly when she came in and went out, that she never saw so much as his shadow upon the floor, and knew not whether he was greatly changed or not. CHAPTER XXXIV IN RICHARD'S ROOM