He could not complain of his wife's conduct in any one respect.

She was obedient to his will in all things, providing for his comfort with scrupulous regularity, industrious, indefatigable even.

As a housekeeper and partner of his fortunes, no man could have desired a better wife.

Yet dimly, in that sluggish soul, there was the consciousness that he had married a woman who hated him, that he had bought her with a price; and, being a man prone to think the worst of his fellow-creatures, Mr.Whitelaw believed that, sooner or later, his wife meant to have her revenge upon him somehow.

She was waiting for his death perhaps; calculating that, being so much her senior, and a hard-working man, he would die soon enough to leave her a young widow.