The Hannah Martin he had married had been a hard body indeed, but respectable, upright, with the same moral instincts as himself.

She had kept the farm together--he knew that; he could not have lived without her, and in all practical respects she had been a good and industrious wife.

He had coveted her industry and her strong will; and, having got the use of them, he had learnt to put up with her contempt for him, and to fit his softer nature to hers.
Yet it seemed to him that there had always been certain conditions implied in this subjection of his, and that she was breaking them.
He could not have been fetching and carrying all these years for a woman who could go on wilfully appropriating money that did not belong to her,--who could even speak with callous indifference of the prospect of turning out her niece to a life of sin.
He thought of Sandy's money with loathing.

It was like the cursed stuff that Achan had brought into the camp--an evil leaven fermenting in their common life, and raising monstrous growths.
Reuben Grieve did not demand much of himself; a richer and more spiritual nature would have thought his ideals lamentably poor.
But, such as they were, the past year had proved that he could not fall below them without a dumb anguish, without a sense of shutting himself out from grace.

He felt himself--by his fear of his wife--made a partner in Hannah's covetousness, in Hannah's cruelty towards Sandy's children.