But what was he really seeking?
Up to this time maternal feeling and conjugal love had been so mingled in the heart of this woman that the children, equally beloved by husband and wife, had never come between them.

Suddenly she found herself at times more mother than wife, though hitherto she had been more wife than mother.

However ready she had been to sacrifice her fortune and even her children to the man who had chosen her, loved her, adored her, and to whom she was still the only woman in the world, the remorse she felt for the weakness of her maternal love threw her into terrible alternations of feeling.

As a wife, she suffered in heart; as a mother, through her children; as a Christian, for all.
She kept silence, and hid the cruel struggle in her soul.

Her husband, sole arbiter of the family fate, was the master by whose will it must be guided; he was responsible to God only.