His self-love was far too much taken up with the small flatteries of all kinds, and the homage of which he was the object, to have any eyes for the very great compliment indeed which was being paid to him by his wife in the line which she had adopted.

To her he was married, and therefore of her he was always sure enough.
It was from that time that she dated the influence which she usually acquired in the social circles she frequented, and which her husband's position and circumstances made it easy for her to maintain when they changed their residence to Arendal.
But those first years of their married life had not passed without a serious, and to her completely decisive, _eclaircissement_.

It was occasioned by his relations with the wife of an officer of rank, which had become really more intimate than her pride could stand, although she knew very well that on her husband's side it was only a sort of mixture of vanity and policy that prompted his affectation of devotion.

She had treated the lady with marked coldness at a party where they had met, and her husband had taken her to task for it when they got home.
Entirely wrapped up in himself as he was, it had never occurred to him that his wife could have any cause of complaint against him, and what she had been going through had been altogether lost upon him.

She did not say much now in reply to his reproaches--she merely stood and looked at him in a way that made him feel rather uncomfortable, and then quietly left the room.