She was the wife of a man who almost worshipped her, and who ceased not to woo her with all the arts he knew how to practise.

Impatient he became, at times, with her impassiveness, and fretted by her coldness.
Jealous of her he was always.

But he strove to win that love which, ere his half-coercion of her into marriage, he had been warned he did not possess--but his strivings were in vain.

He was a meaner bird, and could not mate with the eagle.
To Mrs.Dexter, this life was a breathing death.

Yet with a wonderful power of endurance and self-control, she moved along her destined way, and none of the people she met in society--nor even her nearest friends--had any suspicion of her real state of mind.