“And are you so ungenerous,” she cried, “so formal, so conventional, Gervase--oh, forgive me for saying it--as to mind? Would you rather we had not married, had not loved perhaps, had not been happy--to save your pride?” It is a fine thing to assume indignation and a high superiority to sublunary motives. Gervase was beaten down by this appeal and reproach. He was in fact a very happy man; and he knew, which was a great solace to that pride which he could not have met otherwise, that he was a very creditable husband. And it was indeed all past, and could not be changed. He did not maintain a grudge for such a cause against his wife. But it cannot be denied that it gave him many thoughts. This anxious mysterious world in which even the nearest and dearest can thus deceive each other; where thoughts unknown to us go on within the heads that share our very pillow, and secret stories exist in the soberest and most well regulated of lives. What a strange world it is! and how little we know! THE END. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sons and Daughters, by Margaret Oliphant