If she had been partly coerced into the compact, he had been deceived by her promises at the altar into expecting more than it was in her power to give.

She owed him not only a wife's allegiance, but a wife's tender consideration.
Alas! how suddenly had all these good purposes been withered up, like tender flowers in the biting frost! And now there was strife between them--bitterness, anger, scorn, alienation.

The uneasiness which her husband had manifested for some months previously, whenever she was in free, animated conversation with gentlemen, annoyed her slightly; but she had never regarded it as a very serious affection on his part, and, conscious of her own purity, believed that he would ere long see the evidence thereof, and cease to give himself useless trouble.

His conduct at Saratoga, followed by the conversations with Mrs.De Lisle and Mrs.Anthony, aroused her to a truer sense of his actual state of mind.

His singular, stealthy scanning of her countenance, immediately after their arrival at Newport, following, as she rightly concluded, his unexpected meeting with Hendrickson, considerably disturbed the balance of mind she had sought to gain, and this dimmed her clear perceptions of duty.