en
these minor projects--which he had urged her to take up as a means of
learning their essential dependence on his larger scheme--were soon to
be set aside by obstacles of a material order. Bessy always wanted
money--not a great deal, but, as she reasonably put it, "enough"--and
who was to blame if her father and Mr. Tredegar, each in his different
capacity, felt obliged to point out that every philanthropic outlay at
Westmore must entail a corresponding reduction in her income? Perhaps if
she could have been oftener at Hanaford these arguments would have been
counteracted, for she was tender-hearted, and prompt to relieve such
suffering as she saw about her; but her imagination was not active, and
it was easy for her to forget painful sights when they were not under
her eye. This was perhaps--half-consciously--one of the reasons why she
avoided Hanaford; why, as Amherst exclaimed, they had been everywhere
since their marriage but to the place where their obligations called
them. There had, at any rate, always been some good excuse for not
returning there, and consequently for postponing the work of improvement
which, it was generally felt, her husband could not fitly begin till she
_had_ returned and gone over the ground with him. After their marriage,
and especially in view of the comment excited by that romantic incident,
it was impossible not to yield to her wish that they should go abroad
for a few months; then, before her confinement, the doctors had exacted
that she should be spared all fatigue and worry; and after the baby's
death Amherst had felt with her too tenderly to venture an immediate
return to unwelcome questions.

For by this time it had become clear to him that such questions were,
and always would be, unwelcome to her. As the easiest means of escaping
them, she had once more dismissed the whole problem to the vague and
tiresome sphere of "business," whence he had succeeded in detaching it
for a moment in the early days of their union. Her first husband--poor
unappreciated Westmore!--had always spared her the boredom of
"business," and Halford Gaines and Mr. Tredegar were ready to show her
the same consideration; it was part of the modern code of chivalry that
lovely woman should not be bothered about ways and means. But Bessy was
too much the wife--and the wife in love--to consent that her husband's
views on the management of the mills should be totally disregarded.
Precisely because her advisers lo