ration, she had never once, so
far as Winthrop knew, sought to return to him, or asked him to return to
her.

The marriage of Lansing Harold and Margaret Cruger had taken place while
Winthrop was abroad. When he came home soon afterwards, at the breaking
out of the war, he found that the young wife of nineteen had left her
husband, had returned to live with Mrs. Rutherford, with whom she had
lived for a short time before her marriage. She had come to Mrs.
Rutherford upon the death of her grandmother, Mrs. Cruger; this aunt by
marriage was now her nearest relative, and this aunt's house was to be
her home. To this home she had now returned, and here it was that Evert
first made her acquaintance. Lanse, meanwhile, had gone to Italy.

There had been no legal separation, Mrs. Rutherford told him; probably
there never would be one, for Margaret did not approve of them. Lanse,
too, would probably disapprove; they were well matched in their
disapprovals! It was not known by society at large, Mrs. Rutherford
continued, that there had been any irrevocable disagreement between the
two; society at large probably supposed it to be one of those cases, so
common nowadays, where husband and wife, being both fond of travelling,
have discovered that they enjoy their travels more when separated than
when together, as (unless there happens to be a really princely fortune)
individual tastes are so apt to be sacrificed in travelling, on one side
or the other. Take the one item of trains, Mrs. Rutherford went on; some
persons liked to get over the ground by night, and were bored to death
by a long journey by day; others became so exhausted by one night of
travel that the whole of the next day was spent recovering from it. Then
there were people who preferred to reach the station at the last minute,
people who liked to run and rush; and others whose day was completely
spoiled by any such frantic haste at the beginning. The most amiable of
men sometimes developed a curious obstinacy, when travelling, concerning
the small matter of which seat in a railway-carriage the wife should
take. Yes, on the whole, Mrs. Rutherford thought it natural that
husbands and wives, if possessed of strong wills, should travel
separately; the small differences, which made the trouble, did not come
up in the regular life at home. It was very common for American wives to
be in Europe without their husbands; in the case of the Harolds, it was
simply that the husband