id Zoe. "Is my husband much like him?"

"More in looks than disposition. I sometimes think he resembles my father
more than his own in the latter regard.

"Yes," thought Zoe, "that's where he gets his disposition to domineer over
me and order me about. I always knew Grandpa Dinsmore was of that sort."

Aloud she said, with a watery smile, "And my Edward has been very tenderly
careful of me."

"And always will be, I trust," said his mother, smiling more cheerily. "If
he does not prove so, he is less like my father than I think. Mamma will
tell you, I am sure, that she has been the happiest of wives."

"I suppose it depends a good deal upon the two dispositions how a couple
get on together," remarked Zoe, sagely. "But, mamma, do you think the man
should always rule and have his way in everything?"

"I think a wife's best plan, if she desires to have her own way, is always
to be or to seem ready to give up to her husband. Don't deny or oppose
their claim to authority, and they are not likely to care to exert it."

"If I were only as wise and good as you, mamma!" murmured Zoe with a sigh.

"Ah, dear, I am not at all good; and as to the wisdom, I trust it will
come to you with years; there is an old saying that we cannot expect to
find gray heads on green shoulders."

CHAPTER XXI.

"And if division come, it soon is past,
Too sharp, too strange an agony to last.
And like some river's bright, abundant tide,
Which art or accident had forc'd aside,
The well-springs of affection gushing o'er,
Back to their natural channels flow once more."
--Mrs. Norton.

Left alone, Zoe sat meditating on her mother-in-law's advice.

"Oh," she said to herself, "if I could only know that my husband's love
isn't gone forever, I could take comfort in planning to carry it out; but
oh, if he hadn't quite left off caring for me, how could he threaten me
so, and then go away without making up, without saying good-by, even if he
didn't kiss me? I couldn't have gone away from him so for one day, and he
expects to be away for ten. Ten days! such a long, long while!" and her
tears fell like rain.

She wiped them away, after a little, opened her books and tried to study,
but she could not fix her mind upon the subject; her thoughts would wander
from it to Edward travelling farther and farther from her, and the tears
kept dropping on the page.

She gave it up and tried to sew