already wondering if she were
beginning to love Harold; but for all this uncertainty, she believed
that if the marriage were to be a physical as well as a civil union,
she would have confessed before the ceremony took place her previous
intimacy with Perigal. After the marriage, the holy fervour with which
Harold had regarded Mavis bewildered her. The more his nature was
revealed to her, the better she was enabled to realise the cold-blooded
brutality with which the supreme Power (Mavis's thoughts did not run so
easily in the direction of a Heavenly Father as was once their wont)
had permanently mutilated Harold's life, which had been of the rarest
promise. Still ignorant of her real sentiments for her husband, she had
persuaded him, for no apparent reason, to delay acquainting his family
with the news of their marriage. Truth soon illumined Mavis's mind.
Directly she realised how devotedly she loved her husband (the maternal
aspect of her love did not occur to her), her punishment for her
previous duplicity began. She was constantly overwhelmed with bitter
reproaches because of her having set out to marry her husband from
motives of revenge against his family.

Mavis's confession to the Devitts temporarily eased her mind, but, as
her husband's solicitude for her happiness redoubled, her torments
recommenced with all their old-time persistency. Harold's declining
health gave her innumerable anguished hours; she realised that, so long
as he lived, she would suffer for the deception she had practised. She
believed that, if she survived him, her remaining days would be filled
with grief.

Whichever way she looked, trouble confronted her with hard, unbending
features.

She was enmeshed in a net of sorrow from which there was no escape.

In order to stifle any hints or rumours which might have got about
Melkbridge of Mavis having been a mother without being a wife, she was
pressed by the Devitts to make a stay of some length at Melkbridge
House. Guessing the reason of this invitation, she accepted, although
she, as well as her husband, were eager to get into a quaint,
weather-beaten farmhouse which Harold had bought in the neighbourhood.

To make her stay as tolerable as possible, Mavis set herself to win the
hearts of the Devitt family, the feminine members of which, she was
convinced, were bitterly hostile to her. The men of the household, to
the scarcely concealed dismay of the women, quickly came over to her
side.