Madame Maitland, for years, had been envious of her husband, but envious as one of the rivals of an artist would be, envious as one pretty woman is of another, as one banker is of his opponent, as a politician of his adversary, with the fierce, implacable envy which writhes with physical pain in the face of success, which is transported with a sensual joy in the face of disaster.

It is a great mistake to limit the ravages of that guilty passion to the domain of professional emulation.

When it is deep, it does not alone attack the qualities of the person, but the person himself, and it was thus that Lydia envied Lincoln.

Perhaps the analysis of this sentiment, very subtle in its ugliness, will explain to some a few of the antipathies against which they have struck in their relatives.

For it is not only between husband and wife that these unavowed envies are met, it is between lover and mistress, friend and friend, brother and brother, sometimes, alas, father and son, mother and daughter! Lydia had married Lincoln Maitland partly out of obedience to her brother's wishes, partly from vanity, because the young man was an American, and because it was a sort of victory over the prejudices of race, of which she thought constantly, but of which she never spoke.
It required only three months of married life to perceive that Maitland could not forgive himself for that marriage.