for him, understanding the great worry of his wife's morbid
jealousy. But the general public thought him extremely fortunate to have
married a woman--or rather a young girl--whose enormous wealth was only
equalled by her extraordinary devotion. Yet from the one person who
mattered, the look of tacit sympathy was denied him. How it would have
soothed him and made him absolutely happy! And Bertha was the only human
being who must never be allowed to know of his domestic troubles. She
was extremely proud, and it would have caused her great anger and pain
to think that after throwing her over (as he really had, for worldly
advantages), he should then want to come back, complain ungratefully of
the benefactress he had chosen and philander and amuse himself again. So
he had never referred to his unhappy life. His plan was deeper than
that. It was to appear merely the amusing friend, until by some chance,
he should feel his way to be more secure; to be, in fact, a kind of tame
cat, a _camarade_, useful, and intellectually sympathetic, unselfishly
devoted--until, perhaps, the time might come when she might find she
could not do without him. His calculations happened to be completely
wrong, but that, of course, he could not know. Like all collectors,
whether of women or of any other works of art or nature, although a
connoisseur, he did not quite recognise the exceptional when he met
it--his rules of life were too general. And his love for Bertha--what
word can one use but the word-of-all-work, love, which means so many
variations and shades, and complications of passion, sentiment, vanity
and attraction?--his love had greatly increased, was growing stronger:
sometimes he wondered whether it was the mere contradictory, defiant
obstinacy of the discouraged admirer; and, certainly, there was in his
devotion a strong infusion of a longing to score off his tyrannising
wife and the fortunate, amiable Percy. Nigel's jealousy of Percy--and
not of Percy only, but in a less degree of most men Bertha knew--was not
very far behind his wife's jealousy of him. A morbid propensity that
causes great suffering in domestic life is often curiously infectious to
the very person for whom it creates most suffering. Nigel sometimes
found himself positively imitating Mary in many little ways; watching,
and listening and asking indirect questions to find things out: if he
had dared he would have made Bertha a violent scene every time her
husband came int