CHAPTER VIII.
The religious attitude which Mrs.McKinstry had assumed towards her husband's weak civilized tendencies was not entirely free from human rancor.

That strong loyal nature which had unsexed itself in the one idea of duty, now that duty seemed to be no longer appreciated took refuge in her forgotten womanhood and in the infinitesimally small arguments, resources, and manoeuvres at its command.

She had conceived a singular jealousy of this daughter who had changed her husband's nature, and who had supplanted the traditions of the household life; she had acquired an exaggerated depreciation of those feminine charms which had never been a factor in her own domestic happiness.

She saw in her husband's desire to mitigate the savage austerities of their habits only a weak concession to the powers of beauty and adornment--degrading vanities she had never known in their life-long struggle for frontier supremacy--that had never brought them victorious out of that struggle.
"Frizzles," "furblows," and "fancy fixin's" had never helped them in their exodus across the plains; had never taken the place of swift eyes, quick ears, strong hands, and endurance; had never nursed the sick or bandaged the wounded.

When envy or jealousy invades the female heart after forty it is apt to bring a bitterness which knows no attenuating compensation in that coquetry, emulation, passionate appeal, or innocent tenderness, which makes tolerable the jealous caprices of the younger woman.