The daughter wished it with an intensity that amazed her father.

And gradually the Bishop discovered that he detested his paragon of a son-in-law.

But why?
It was not jealousy.

He really was a paragon, not a sham.

To the Bishop it seemed, and with truth, that any other woman would have done as well as his daughter, that her husband neither understood her nor wished to understand her, that he accepted ruthlessly without knowing that he accepted it, her selfless devotion, that he used her as a cushion to make his rare moments of leisure more restful, that her love was not even a source of happiness to him, only a solace.