Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/357

346 stalled himself there instead. Mr. Dunbar had long been preparing to shine forth some day the patron of the arts and the apostle of progress; now he felt that the opportunity which his old friend had kindly left him as a legacy was being ruthlessly closed by the machinations of a selfish and ambitious man of a younger generation. In the family circle his bitterness was not to be disguised; and though it seemed mainly to derive its source from the ill treatment which had been accorded to Stewart, it concerned itself in fact with his own hard usage.

Stewart, although more guarded in expression, exhibited his wound to Lydia if not to others. She could do nothing to heal it, and the daily inspection of it caused her pain. Stewart perceived this, but a subtle motive impelled him nevertheless to keep the wound open. He wished her to share his bitterness, his sense of resentment. The demand that she should not nourish a warmer friendship for any man than that which he himself entertained was one that his pride imposed upon her; he watched her silently to make sure that she was acceding to it. Her liking for Floyd had never awakened any jealousy in his heart, and it was no such personal motive as jealousy that now prompted his suspicious surveillance. He was inspired merely by a high sensitiveness to convention; should she try to create for Floyd a different atmosphere from that which he tacitly prescribed, she would be putting either herself or him in the wrong. To Stewart it seemed axiomatic that a wife should never excel her husband in devotion to his friends. Lydia's conduct hardly satisfied Stewart's rigorous requirements.

She sympathized with him in his disappointment; that was well enough. But he desired that she should commit herself to the support of his grievance by some outspoken word against Floyd. He had himself given her the opportunity when he had said to her, "I never thought that Floyd could treat a friend so shabbily." She had made no answer, and he was not altogether displeased at that.