e of these passions, the most fatal of all, which
marriage was to develop within her--envy.

That hideous vice, one of those which govern the world, has been so
little studied by moralists, as all too dishonorable for the heart
of man, no doubt, that this statement may appear improbable. Madame
Maitland, for years, had been envious of her husband, but envious as one
of the rivals of an artist would be, envious as one pretty woman is
of another, as one banker is of his opponent, as a politician of his
adversary, with the fierce, implacable envy which writhes with physical
pain in the face of success, which is transported with a sensual joy in
the face of disaster. It is a great mistake to limit the ravages of that
guilty passion to the domain of professional emulation. When it is deep,
it does not alone attack the qualities of the person, but the person
himself, and it was thus that Lydia envied Lincoln. Perhaps the analysis
of this sentiment, very subtle in its ugliness, will explain to some
a few of the antipathies against which they have struck in their
relatives. For it is not only between husband and wife that these
unavowed envies are met, it is between lover and mistress, friend and
friend, brother and brother, sometimes, alas, father and son, mother and
daughter! Lydia had married Lincoln Maitland partly out of obedience to
her brother's wishes, partly from vanity, because the young man was an
American, and because it was a sort of victory over the prejudices of
race, of which she thought constantly, but of which she never spoke.

It required only three months of married life to perceive that Maitland
could not forgive himself for that marriage. Although he affected to
scorn his compatriots, and although at heart he did not share any of the
views of the country in which he had not set foot since his fifth year,
he could not hear remarks made in New York upon that marriage without a
pang. He disliked Lydia for the humiliation, and she felt it. The birth
of a child would no doubt have modified that feeling, and, if it would
not have removed it, would at least have softened the embittered heart
of the young wife. But no child was born to them. They had not returned
from their wedding tour, upon which Florent accompanied them, before
their lives rolled along in that silence which forms the base of all
those households in which husband and wife, according to a simple and
grand expression of the people, do not live hea