inclination and his own private wish. If his wife
could serve his policy, well and good. What was a wife for?

There were those who regarded Thornton Rush with positive fear. They
quailed beneath the flash of his eye. Such dared not openly oppose him
and were outwardly his friends. Some, lacking powers of penetration,
deemed him better than he was, and thought there must be much hidden
good in one who had won so sweet a woman for a wife. Few dared exhibit,
or openly proclaim the intense disaffection with which he had inspired
them. But those who did were bitter and unrelenting in animosity; were
enemies indeed, worthy of the name. Foremost among these was Carlton
Sharp. This Captain still led a company well drilled and faithful. On
the other side, Thornton Rush, since about it was no smell of gunpowder,
trained a goodly crew, with which he met the Captain's line. Victory was
not always upon one side. Politics is a very uncertain _res gestoe_.
And human nature, more uncertain still, would vacillate from
wing to wing, now being a Sharp's retainer, and anon a hanger-on of
Rush. Such changelings would not count, but that their vote weighs
heavily.

Mrs. Lisle had already made one visit to her son, which lasted several
months. During this visit Althea's eyes had been opened, and she had
been led to wonder, as before in the case of her husband, for what
purpose had been assumed the false garb of amiability during the time of
her sojourn at Kennons. Both Mrs. Lisle and that strange woman's son
were mysteries to Althea. To her mind of singular clearness and purity
they were incomprehensible. Their falseness and hardness she was more
ready to believe hallucinations of her own mind, rather than really
glaring faults of character in them. Hence she strove to force herself
to believe them better than they were. But this could not last--and at
length the young wife was driven to the sad conclusion that her
mother-in-law was not only harsh, unamiable, and unforgiving, but
destitute of moral and religious principle, and that the man she had
married was worthy such ignoble parentage.

Did Althea then learn to regard her husband with scorn and contempt? Did
she become a woman's rights woman and inveigh against man's tyranny and
woman's weak submission? Not yet. Althea was motherless, and to all
intents fatherless. She had a warm, loving nature, and there were few in
this world for her to love. She had given her first love to Thornton,