s though
with wifely tolerance she perfectly understood his admiring pretty young
women who looked like muses and played the violin. She was not yet his
wife; this was the fact, she repeated it over her hidden misery, that
Gerald did not enough realise. She was not his wife, and she did not
like to see him admiring other young women and behaving towards herself
as though she were a comprehending and devoted spouse, who found
pleasure in providing them for his delectation. She knew that she could
trust Gerald, that not for a moment would he permit himself a
flirtation, and not for a moment fail to discriminate between admiration
of the newcomer and devotion to herself; yet that the admiration had
been sufficient to keep him on at Merriston, while the devotion took for
granted the right to all sorts of marital neglects, was the fact that
rankled. It did more than rankle; it burned with all the other burnings.
Althea had, at all events, been dragged from her mood of introspection.
She had lost the sense of nonentity. She was conscious of a passionate,
protesting self that cried out for justice. Who was Gerald, after all,
to take things so for granted? Why should he be so sure of her? He was
not her husband. She was his betrothed, not his wife, and more, much
more was due to a betrothed than he seemed to imagine. It was not so
that another man would have treated her; it was not so that Franklin
would have handled his good fortune. Her heart, bereft and starving,
cried out for Franklin and for the love that had never failed, even
while, under and above everything, was her love for Gerald, and the cold
fear lest he should guess what was in her heart, should be angry with
her and turn away. It was this fear that gave her self-mastery. She
acted the part that Gerald took for granted; she was the tolerant,
devoted wife. Yet even so she guessed that Gerald had still his instinct
of something amiss. He, too, with all his grace, all his deference and
sweetness, was guarded. And once or twice when they were alone together
an embarrassed silence had fallen between them.

Mrs. Peel and Sally left on Saturday, and on Saturday afternoon Miss
Harriet Robinson was to arrive from Paris, to spend the Sunday, to
travel up to town with Althea and Gerald on Monday, and to remain there
with Althea until her marriage. Saturday morning, therefore, after the
departure of Mrs. Peel and Sally, would be empty, and when she and
Gerald met, just before