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 new and harassing, vexatious, half understood, wholly resented.

The wife had her burden to bear also. The laundress had only known the old wife as “Mrs Wood.”

“She thought I was your mother,” the wife said when Michael propounded the difficulty. But the laundress’s attitude to the new Mrs Wood had a sting that was almost punishment enough to the wife, had Michael only known, for all that she had done amiss.

The hour of departure for the Christmas festivities at Wood Grange came as a relief from the persistent pinpricks of unexplained emotion which tormented him. His wife was young and beautiful, yet he was only conscious of repulsion. He hated her for her trickery. But most he hated her because she had cheated him of the old wife—the friend, the confidante, who had grown to be so much, and so much the best part, in his life. For now there was no confidence between the two—no talk, no reading, no music to brighten the Temple rooms. They lived in an almost complete silence.

Every window of the Grange shone out with yellow light across the snow. For once