I hope, from my heart, Miss Deane may never darken these doors again." Zoe was feeling quite out of spirits over the prospect of another day to be spent in society so distasteful: she lay for a moment contemplating it ruefully.
"The worst of it is, that she manages to make me appear so unamiable and unattractive in my husband's eyes," she sighed to herself.

"But I'll foil her efforts," she added, between her shut teeth, springing up, and beginning her toilet as she spoke: "he likes to have me bright and cheery, and well and becomingly dressed, and so I will be." She made haste to arrange her hair in the style he considered most becoming, and to don the morning-dress he most admired.
As she put the finishing touches to her attire, she thought she heard his step on the stairs, and ran out eagerly to meet him, and claim a morning kiss.
But the bright, joyous expression of her face suddenly changed to one of anger and chagrin as she caught the sound of his and Miss Deane's voices in the hall below, and, looking over the balustrade, saw them go into the library together.
"She begins early! It's a pity if I can't have my own husband to myself even before breakfast," Zoe muttered, stepping back into the dressing-room.
Her first impulse was to remain where she was; the second, to go down at once, and join them.
She hastened to do so, but, before she reached the foot of the stairway, the breakfast-bell rang; and, instead of going into the library, she passed on directly to the dining-room, and, as the other two entered a moment later, gave Miss Deane a cold "Good-morning," and Edward a half reproachful, half pleading look, which he, however, returned with one so kind and re-assuring that she immediately recovered her spirits, and was able to do the honors of the table with ease and grace.
Coming upon her in that room alone, an hour later, just as she had dismissed Aunt Dicey with her orders for the day, "Little wife," he said, bending down to give her the coveted caress, "I owe you an explanation." "No, Ned, dear, I don't ask it of you: I know it is all right," she answered, flushing with happiness, and her eyes smiling up into his.
"Still, I think it best to explain," he said.

"I had finished attending to the little matters I spoke of,--writing a note, and giving some directions to Uncle Ben,--and was on my way back to our apartments, when Miss Deane met me on the stairway, and asked if I would go into the library with her, and help her to look up a certain passage in one of Shakspeare's plays, which she wished to quote in a letter she was writing.

She was anxious to have it perfectly correct, she said, and would be extremely obliged for my assistance in finding it." "And you could not in politeness refuse.

I know that, Ned, and please don't think me jealous." "I know, dear, that you try not to be; and it shall be my care to avoid giving you the least occasion.