Pretty, isn't it ?" "Very pretty." The young man on the grass was thinking.
He knew Mrs.Rolfston slightly; knew her as the wife of a well-to-do man who saw but little of her husband.
Daughter of a poor man of none too good character in the little town, she had grown up shrewd, self-possessed, and with much animal beauty.
At twenty she had married a man of fifty, a builder of steamboats, a red-faced, riotous brute, who had bought her as he would buy a horse, and to whom she went easily because she wanted the position money gives.

Within a week he had disgusted her to such an extent that she almost repented of the bargain.

Within a year, he had tired of her and was openly unfaithful in every port upon the lakes, a vigorous, lawless debauchee.

His ship-building was done in a distant port, and he rarely visited his wife.

He rather feared her, mastiff as he was, for here was the keener intelligence, and her moods, at times, were desperate as his.