Albert looked from one woman to the other. He knew Clara was several years younger than Ella, and yet she looked older—an effect heightened by her dress, a plain light gray with plain cuffs, and collar fastened by a bow of rich black ribbon. Albert wondered why she would wear black, when she knew he hated it. Clearly she did not study to please him, as Ella did. He did not reflect, possibly he did not know, that Clara’s little dower from her father had been exhausted, though managed with the greatest care, and that it would scarcely have permitted her to dress like Ella for a single year. Clara had never yet asked Albert for any of the money that he spent freely upon his own dress, on his friends in wines and cigars, at his club, and in many ways; and as he had several times expressed surprise at the extent of the household expenses, she had endeavored, in ways he never suspected, to reduce them. She may be blamed, but she simply could not bring herself to ask him for any money for herself. The old, perfect, childlike confidence was gone. She thought, moreover, that a husband’s duty was to set aside for the mistress of the house, a certain generous allowance for her personal and household expenses; and not dole money out week by week, to meet current expenses. It seemed to her very undignified, to say the least, and not what her father would have done, as he had proved ever since the growth of Oakdale and the increase of his practice enabled him to count on a steady income. She did not, however, attribute Albert’s course to penuriousness or selfishness, but simply to ignorance of the ideas of a wife on this subject. Time would harmonize all this, she thought, if ever the old Eden came back, with that divine mutual confidence that makes it wise to express every thought freely and frankly. So she went on from day to day managing Albert’s house with a rare skill, improved by constant experience and a quick practical intelligence, receiving his friends, gracing his table and his drawing-rooms with her sweet presence, and in return receiving such attentions from him as his nature suggested, when not absorbed by Ella’s charms, or by the claims of other friends. She learned to be a hypocrite, as many a wife has done. If she expressed the grief that was in her heart, even by a tone, a word, Albert’s pleasure was affected by it. To be sure, his course was much like that of a person holding your head under water, and then feeling injured because you are so inconsiderate as to look strangled! At times Clara felt as if she could go mad at Albert’s persistence in declaring that his love had in no way changed. A thousand words and acts and movements, proved his protestations utterly false; and between her struggle to please him by liking Ella, whom any other woman of spirit would have felt justified in hating, to attend to all the household responsibilities, to show a smiling face when her heart was breaking, to