The strongest expression she ever used, the one which came nearest to
being an indignant repelling of what I had said, was one day, when I
exclaimed:--

"Ellen, I would die before I'd risk my happiness in the keeping of such a
man."

"My happiness is already in his keeping," said she in a steady voice, "and
I believe his is in mine. He is to be my husband and not yours, dear; you
do not know him as I do. You do not understand him."

But it is not to give an analysis of her character or of his, nor to give
a narrative of their family history, that I write this tale. It is only
one episode of their life that I shall try to reproduce here, and I do it
because I believe that its lesson is of priceless worth to women.

Ellen had been married fourteen years, and was the mother of five
children, when my story begins. The years had gone in the main peacefully
and pleasantly. The children, three girls and two boys, were fair and
strong. Their life had been a very quiet one, for our village was far
removed from excitements of all kinds. It was one of the suburban villages
of ----, and most of the families living there were the families of
merchants or lawyers doing business in the town, going in early in the
morning, and returning late at night. There is usually in such communities
a strange lack of social intercourse; whether it be that the daily
departure and return of the head of the family keeps up a perpetual
succession of small crises of interest to the exclusion of others, or that
the night finds all the fathers and brothers too tired to enjoy anything
but slippers and cigars, I know not; but certain it is that all such
suburban villages are unspeakably dull and lifeless. There is barely
feeling enough of good neighborhood to keep up the ordinary interchange of
the commonest civilities.

Except for long visits to the city in the winter, and long journeys in the
summer, I myself should have found life insupportably tedious. But Ellen
was absolutely content. Her days were unvaryingly alike, a simple routine
of motherly duties and housekeeping cares. Her evenings were equally
unvaried, being usually spent in sewing or reading, while her husband, in
seven evenings out of ten, dozed, either on the sofa, or on one of the
children's little beds in the nursery. His exquisite tenderness to the
children, and his quiet delight in simply being where they were, were the
brightest points in John Gray's character and life.

Such