erior to
other girls, so true and loyal! It was quite a disillusion; to think
that she could get over _him_ so easily! Women usually took much longer
than that. However, he now despised himself even more as a fool than as
a coward for having given up Bertha, and not being of the type who
trouble to conceal their feelings in domestic life, he openly and
frankly showed to the unfortunate Mary that he knew he had made an
irrevocable mistake. This was the natural way of regaining his
self-respect, since he was under the deepest obligation to her. To add
to his annoyance, not long after the marriage he and his brother Charlie
came into a legacy from an unexpected and forgotten relative. He knew,
then, that if he had waited a little longer, (as she had wished), he
could, without sacrifice, have married Bertha; and so he was naturally
very angry with Mary.

* * * * *

Now that Bertha was beyond his reach she seemed to him the one desirable
thing in the world. For several years they hardly met; then Nigel
contrived that they should become friends again. Her feeling for him
could never be revived. His was far more vivid than formerly. It was
fanned by her coolness, and was in a fair way to become an _idee fixe_,
for he was not material enough to live without some dream, some ideal,
and Bertha found him amusing. There always had been a certain mental
sympathy between them; in a sense (superficially and humorously), they
saw life very much from the same standpoint. With the instinctive tact
of the real lover of women he carefully concealed from her the secret
that made his home life miserable, instead of merely tedious. It was,
simply, that Mary was morbidly, madly jealous of him. He had shown far
too soon that he had married her for her money, and if he had convinced
her that she had bought him, it was perhaps natural in return that she
should wish for her money's worth. The poor woman was passionately in
love with Nigel. She suspected him of infidelity, with and without
reason, morning, noon, and night; it was almost a monomania. They had
two children in the first and second years of the marriage. Nigel was
carelessly fond of them, but he regarded them rather as a private luxury
and resource of his wife, mistakenly thinking their society could fill
up all the gaps made by his rather frequent absences. Nigel knew better
than to complain of his wife, or to ask for sympathy from Bertha, for he
was c