In their simple circumstances, Louise never missed the affluence that had flattered her whole life in her father's house. It seemed to her as if she had not lived before her marriage--as if she had always lived as she did now. She made the most of her house-keeping, but there was not a great deal of that, at the most. She knew some New York people, but it was too early yet for them to be back to town, and, besides, she doubted if she should let them know where she was; for society afflicted Maxwell, and she could not care for it unless he did. She did not wish to do anything as yet, or be anything apart from him; she was timid about going into the street without him. She wished to be always with him, and always talking to him; but it soon came to his imploring her not to talk when she was in the room where he was writing; and he often came to the table so distraught that the meal might have passed without a word but for her. He valued her all she could possibly have desired in relation to his work, and he showed her how absolutely he rested upon her sympathy, if not her judgment, in it. He submitted everything to her, and forbore, and changed, and amended, and wrote and rewrote at her will; or when he revolted, and wrote on in defiance of her, he was apt to tear the work up. He destroyed a good deal of good literature in this way, and more than once it happened that she had tacitly changed her mind and was of his way of thinking when it was too late. In view of such a chance she made him promise that he would always show her what he had written, even when he had written wholly against her taste and wish. He was not to let his pride keep him from doing this, though, as a general thing, she took a good deal of pride in his pride, having none herself, as she believed. Whether she had or not, she was very wilful, and rather prepotent; but she never bore malice, as the phrase is, when she got the worst of anything, though she might have been quite to blame. She had in all things a high ideal of conduct, which she expected her husband to live up to when she was the prey of adverse circumstances. At other times she did her share of the common endeavor.