Dan said no more about Sir George Galbraith; and indeed he had no excuse, for Sir George did not come again. There were other men, however, who came to the house, Dan's own friends; and now that Beth's eyes were opened, she perceived that he watched them all suspiciously if they paid her any attention; and if she showed the slightest pleasure in the conversation of any of them, he would be sure to make some sneering remark about it afterwards. Dan was so radically vicious that the notion of any one being virtuous except under compulsion was incomprehensible to him.

"Your spirits seem to go up when Mr. Vanrickards is here," he observed one day.

"Thank you for warning me," Beth answered, descending to his level in spite of herself. "I will be properly depressed the next time he comes."

But although she could keep him in check so that he dared not say all that he had in his mind, she understood him; and the worst of it was that his coarse and brutal jealousy accustomed her to the suspicion, and made her contemplate the possibility of such a lapse as he had in his mind. She began to believe that he would not have tormented himself so if husbands did not ordinarily have good reason to be jealous of their wives. She concluded that such treachery of man to man as he dreaded must be normal. And then also she realised that it was thought possible for a married woman to fall in love, and even wondered at last if that would ever be her own case. Dan had, in fact, destroyed his own best safeguard. If a man would keep his wife from evil, he should not teach her to suspect herself—neither should he familiarise her with ideas of vice. Since their marriage Dan's whole conversation, and the depravity of his tastes and habits, had tended towards the brutalisation of Beth. Married life for her was one long initiation into the ways of the vicious.

Dr. Maclure's sordid jealousy made him the laughing-stock of the place, though he never suspected it. His conceit was too great to let him suppose that any sentiment of his could provoke ridicule. It became matter for common gossip, however, and from that time forward gentlemen ceased to visit the house. Men of a certain kind came still, men who were bound to Dan by kindred tastes, but not such as he cared to introduce to Beth. These boon companions generally came in the evening, and were entertained in the dining-room, where they spent the night together, smoking, drinking, and talking after the manner of their kind. Beth could not use her secret chamber after dark for fear of the light being seen, so she stayed in the drawing-room alone till she went to bed. She found those evenings interminable, and the nights more trying still. She could not read or write because of the noise in the dining-room, and had to fall back on her sewing for occupation; but sewing left her mind open to any obsession, and only too often, with the gross laughter from the next room, scraps of the lewd topics her husband delighted in came to her recollection. When Dan discoursed about such things he was at the high-water mark of pleasure, his countenance glowed, and enjoyment of the subject was expressed in all his person. Beth's better nature revolted, but alas! she had become so familiar with such subjects by this time that, although she loathed them, she could not banish them. Life from her husband's point of view was a torment to her, yet under the pressure of his immediate influence it was forced upon her attention more and more—from his point of view.

When she went to bed on his festive nights she suffered from the dread of being disturbed. If her husband were called out at night professionally, it was a pleasure to her to lie awake so that she might be ready to rise the moment he returned, and get him anything he wanted. On those occasions she always had a tray ready for him, with soup to be heated, or coffee to be made over a spirit-lamp, and any little dainty she thought would refresh him. She was fully in sympathy with him in his work, and would have spared herself no fatigue to make it easier for him, but she despised him for his vices, and refused to sacrifice herself in order to make them pleasanter for him. When he stayed up smoking and drinking half the night she resented the loss of sleep entailed upon her, which meant less energy for her own work the next day. The dread of being disturbed made her restless, and the futility of it under the circumstances exasperated her. She suffered, too, more than can be mentioned, from the smell of alcohol and tobacco, of which he reeked, and from which he took no trouble to purify himself. Often and often, when she had tossed herself into a fever on these dreadful nights, she craved for long hours, with infinite yearning, to be safe from disturbance, in purity and peace; and thought how happily, how serenely she would have slept until the morning, and how strong and fresh she would have arisen for another day's work had she been left alone. Only once, however, did she complain. Dan was going out in a particularly cheerful mood that night.

"Shall you be late?" she asked.

"Yes, probably. Why?"

"I was thinking, if you wouldn't mind, I would have a bed made up for you in the spare room. I only sleep in snatches when you are out and I am expecting you. Every sound rouses me. I think it is the door opening. And then when you do come it disturbs me, and I do not sleep again. If you don't mind I should prefer to be alone—on your late nights—your late festive nights."

Dr. Maclure stood looking gloomily into the fireplace.

"Have I annoyed you, Dan?" Beth asked at last.

He walked to the door, stood a moment with his back to her, then turned and looked at her. "Annoyed is not the word," he said. "You have wounded me deeply."

He opened the door as he spoke, and went out. When he had gone Beth sat and suffered. She could not bear to hurt him, she was not yet sufficiently brutalised for that; so she said no more on the subject, but patiently endured the long lonely night watches, and the after companionship which had in it all that is most trying and offensive to a refined and delicate woman.

After that first display of jealousy Beth discovered that her husband pried upon her continually. He was very high and mighty on the subject of women spying upon men, but there seemed no meanness he would not compass in order to spy upon a woman. He had duplicate keys to her drawers and boxes, and rummaged through all her possessions when she went out. One day she came upon him standing before her wardrobe, feeling in the pockets of her dresses, and on another occasion she discovered him unawares in her bedroom, picking little scraps of paper out of the slop-pail and piecing them together to see what she had been writing. To Beth, accustomed to the simple, honourable principles of her parents, and to the confidence with which her mother had left her letters lying about, because she knew that not one of her children would dream of looking at them, Dan's turpitude was revolting. On those occasions when she caught him, he did not hear her enter the room, and she made her escape without disturbing him, and stole up to her secret chamber, and sat there, suffering from one of those attacks of nausea and shivering which came upon her in moments of deep disgust.

After that she had an attack of illness which kept her in bed for a week; but even then, feverish and suffering as she was, and yearning for the coolness and liberty of a room to herself, she dared not suggest such a thing for fear of a scene.

While she was still in bed Dan brought her some letters one morning. He made no remark when he gave them to her, but he had opened them as usual, and stood watching her curiously while she read them. The first she looked at was from her sister Bernadine, and had a black border round it; but she took it out of its envelope unsuspiciously, and read the words that were uppermost, "Mamma died this morning." In a moment it flashed upon her that Dan had read the letter, and was waiting now to see the effect of the shock upon her. She immediately, but involuntarily, set herself to baffle his cruel curiosity. With a calm, illegible face she read the letter from beginning to end, folded it, and put it back in its envelope deliberately, then took up another which had also been opened.

But suppressed feeling finds vent in some form or other, and Beth showed temper now instead of showing grief. "I wish you would not open my letters," she said irritably. "All the freshness of them is gone for me when you open them without my permission and read them first. Besides, it is an insult to my correspondents. What they say to me is intended for me, and not for you."

"I have a perfect right to open your letters," he retorted.

"I should like to see the Scripture that gives you the right, and I should advise you to waive it if you do not wish me to assume the right to open yours. Your petty prying keeps me in a continual state of irritation. I shall be lowered to retaliate sooner or later. So stop it, please, once and for all."

"My petty prying, indeed!" he exclaimed. "Well, that is a nice thing to say to your husband! Why, even when I do open your letters, which is not often, I never read them without your permission."

"Indeed," said Beth, who had ceased to be stunned by falsehoods. "Then be good enough not even to open them in future."

Dan tried to express injury and indignation in a long, hard look; but Beth was reading another letter, and took no further notice of him.

He hung about a little watching her.

"Any news," he ventured at last, with an imperfect assumption of indifference.

"You know quite well what my news is," she answered bluntly, "and I am not going to discuss it with you. I wish you would leave me alone."

"Well, you're a nice pill!" said Dan, discomfited.

Beth looked up at him. "What are you doing with your hat on in my bedroom?" she asked sharply. "I thought I had made you understand that you must treat me with respect, even if I am your wife."

Dan uttered a coarse oath, and left the room, banging the door after him.

"Thank Heaven—at last!" Beth ejaculated. She had been too anxious to get rid of him to scruple about the means, but when he had gone a reaction set in, and she lay back on her pillows, flushed, excited, furious with him, disgusted with herself. She felt she was falling away from all her ideals. "As the husband is the wife is"—the words flashed through her mind, but she would not believe it inevitable. But even if she should degenerate, her own nature was too large, too strong, too generous to cast the blame on any one but herself. "No!" she exclaimed. "We are what we allow ourselves to be."

Swift following upon that thought came the recollection of a bad fall she had had when she was a little child in Ireland, and the way her mother had picked her up, and cuddled her, and comforted her. Beth burst into a paroxysm of tears. She had understood her mother better than her mother had understood her, had felt for her privations, had admired and imitated her patient endurance; and now to think that it was too late, to think that she had gone, and it would never be in Beth's power to brighten her life or lessen the hardship of it! That was all she thought of. Every week since her marriage she had sent her mother a long, cheerful, amusing letter, full of pleasant details—an exercise in that form of composition; but with never a hint of her troubles; and Mrs. Caldwell died under the happy delusion that it was well with Beth. She never suspected that she had married Beth to a low-born man—not low-born in the sense of being a tradesman's son, for a tradesman's son may be an honest and upright gentleman, just as a peer's son may be a cheat and a snob; but low-born in that he came of parents who were capable of fraud and deceit in social relations, and had taught him no scheme of life in which honour played a conspicuous part. Beth had done her best for her mother, but there was no one now to remind her of this for her comfort, poor miserable girl. Her courageous toil had gone for nothing—her mother would never even know of it; and it seemed to her in that moment of deep disheartenment as if everything she tried was to be equally ineffectual.

Hours later, Minna the housemaid found Beth sitting up in bed, sobbing hopelessly; and got her tea, and stayed with her, making her put some restraint upon herself by the mere fact of her presence; and presently Beth, in her human way, began to talk about her mother to the girl, which relieved her. Mrs. Caldwell had only been ill a few days, and not seriously, as it was supposed; the end had come quite suddenly, so that Beth had never been warned.

Dan did not come in till next morning, which was a great relief to her. She meant to speak about the news to him when he appeared, but somehow, the moment she saw him, her heart hardened, and she could not bring herself to utter a word on the subject. The position was awkward for him; but he got out of it adroitly by pretending he had seen an announcement of the death in the paper.

"I suppose I ought to go to the funeral," he said. "There is doubtless a will."

"Doubtless," said Beth, "but you will not benefit by it, if that is what you are thinking of. Mamma considered that I was provided for, and therefore she left the little she had to Bernadine. She told me herself, because she wanted me to understand her reason for making such a difference between us; and I think she was quite right. She may have left me two or three hundred pounds, but it will not be more than that."

"But even that will be something towards the bills," said Dan, his countenance, which had dropped considerably, clearing again.

Beth looked at him with a set countenance, but said no more. She had begun to observe that the bills only became pressing when her allowance was due.