it all
well?" is the perpetually recurring thought; and there are no voices
calling her away from that soliloquy, no peremptory demands to divert
energy from vain regret or superfluous scruple.

There was one main thread of painful experience in Nancy's married
life, and on it hung certain deeply-felt scenes, which were the
oftenest revived in retrospect. The short dialogue with Priscilla in
the garden had determined the current of retrospect in that frequent
direction this particular Sunday afternoon. The first wandering of her
thought from the text, which she still attempted dutifully to follow
with her eyes and silent lips, was into an imaginary enlargement of the
defence she had set up for her husband against Priscilla's implied
blame. The vindication of the loved object is the best balm affection
can find for its wounds:--"A man must have so much on his mind," is the
belief by which a wife often supports a cheerful face under rough
answers and unfeeling words. And Nancy's deepest wounds had all come
from the perception that the absence of children from their hearth was
dwelt on in her husband's mind as a privation to which he could not
reconcile himself.

Yet sweet Nancy might have been expected to feel still more keenly the
denial of a blessing to which she had looked forward with all the
varied expectations and preparations, solemn and prettily trivial,
which fill the mind of a loving woman when she expects to become a
mother. Was there not a drawer filled with the neat work of her hands,
all unworn and untouched, just as she had arranged it there fourteen
years ago--just, but for one little dress, which had been made the
burial-dress? But under this immediate personal trial Nancy was so
firmly unmurmuring, that years ago she had suddenly renounced the habit
of visiting this drawer, lest she should in this way be cherishing a
longing for what was not given.

Perhaps it was this very severity towards any indulgence of what she
held to be sinful regret in herself, that made her shrink from applying
her own standard to her husband. "It is very different--it is much
worse for a man to be disappointed in that way: a woman can always be
satisfied with devoting herself to her husband, but a man wants
something that will make him look forward more--and sitting by the fire
is so much duller to him than to a woman." And always, when Nancy
reached this point in her meditations--trying, with predetermined
sympa