he felt she was falling
away from all her ideals. "As the husband is the wife is"--the words
flashed through her mind, but she would not believe it inevitable. But
even if she should degenerate, her own nature was too large, too
strong, too generous to cast the blame on any one but herself. "No!"
she exclaimed. "We are what we allow ourselves to be."

Swift following upon that thought came the recollection of a bad fall
she had had when she was a little child in Ireland, and the way her
mother had picked her up, and cuddled her, and comforted her. Beth
burst into a paroxysm of tears. She had understood her mother better
than her mother had understood her, had felt for her privations, had
admired and imitated her patient endurance; and now to think that it
was too late, to think that she had gone, and it would never be in
Beth's power to brighten her life or lessen the hardship of it! That
was all she thought of. Every week since her marriage she had sent her
mother a long, cheerful, amusing letter, full of pleasant details--an
exercise in that form of composition; but with never a hint of her
troubles; and Mrs. Caldwell died under the happy delusion that it was
well with Beth. She never suspected that she had married Beth to a
low-born man--not low-born in the sense of being a tradesman's son,
for a tradesman's son may be an honest and upright gentleman, just as
a peer's son may be a cheat and a snob; but low-born in that he came
of parents who were capable of fraud and deceit in social relations,
and had taught him no scheme of life in which honour played a
conspicuous part. Beth had done her best for her mother, but there was
no one now to remind her of this for her comfort, poor miserable girl.
Her courageous toil had gone for nothing--her mother would never even
know of it; and it seemed to her in that moment of deep disheartenment
as if everything she tried was to be equally ineffectual.

Hours later, Minna the housemaid found Beth sitting up in bed, sobbing
hopelessly; and got her tea, and stayed with her, making her put some
restraint upon herself by the mere fact of her presence; and presently
Beth, in her human way, began to talk about her mother to the girl,
which relieved her. Mrs. Caldwell had only been ill a few days, and
not seriously, as it was supposed; the end had come quite suddenly, so
that Beth had never been warned.

Dan did not come in till next morning, which was a great relief to
her. She mean