hie herself when
her fever was on, he would have been supremely happy. But to forget was
impossible, and he often found himself wondering how much of Frank's
assertion was true, and if Ethelyn would ever be as open and honest
with him as he had tried to be with her. She did not get well very fast,
and the color came slowly back into her lips and cheeks. She was far
happier than she had been before since she first came to Olney. She
could not say that she loved her husband as a true wife ought to love a
man like Richard Markham, but she found a pleasure in his society which
she had never experienced before, while Aunt Barbara's presence was a
constant source of joy. That good woman had prolonged her stay far
beyond what she had thought it possible when she left Chicopee. She
could not tear herself away, when Ethie pleaded so earnestly for her to
remain a little longer, and so, wholly impervious to the hints which
Mrs. Markham occasionally threw out, that her services were no longer
needed as nurse to Ethelyn, she stayed on week after week, seeing far
more than she seemed to see, and making up her mind pretty accurately
with regard to the prospect of Ethie's happiness, if she remained an
inmate of her husband's family.

Aunt Barbara and Mrs. Markham did not harmonize at all. At first, when
Ethie was so sick, everything had been merged in the one absorbing
thought of her danger, and even the knowledge accidentally obtained that
Richard had paid Miss Bigelow's fare out there and would pay it back,
had failed to produce more than a passing pang in the bosom of the
close, calculating, economical Mrs. Markham; but when the danger was
past, it kept recurring again and again, with very unpleasant
distinctness, that Aunt Barbara was an expense they could well do
without. Nobody could quarrel with Aunt Barbara--she was so mild, and
gentle, and peaceable--and Mrs. Markham did not quarrel with her, but
she thought about her all the time, and fretted over her, and remembered
the letter she had written about her ways and her being good to Ethie,
and wondered what she was there for, and why she did not go home, and
asked her what time they generally cleaned house in Chicopee, and if she
dared trust her cleaning with Betty. Aunt Barbara was a great annoyance,
and she complained to Eunice and Mrs. Jones, and Melinda, who had
returned from Washington, that she was spoiling Ethelyn, babying her
so, and making her think herself so much weak