Life's sunbeams seemed strangely wanting, yet the why and wherefore was to the casual observer an unfathomable mystery.
Years before, that wife and mother had left the home of her childhood a happy and trusting bride. Scarcely seventeen, the love which she had bestowed upon him who was now her husband, was the first pure affections of her virgin heart, and in many respects he was worthy of her love, and, as far as was in his nature, returned it. Her senior by many years, he was possessed of high moral principles, good intellectual endowments, and an unblemished reputation among his fellow men.
But there was a cold, repulsive manner, at variance sometimes with his more interior feelings, which could ill meet the warm, affectionate disposition of his young wife, who, cherished and petted in her father's house, looked for the same fond endearments from him to whom she had given all.
Proud of her beauty and intelligence, charmed with her sprightliness and wit, the man was for a time lost in the lover, and enough of fondness and affection were manifested to satisfy the confiding Mary, who had invested her earthly idol with every attribute of perfection. But as months passed on, and he again became immersed in his business, his true character, or, more properly speaking, his habitual manners, were again resumed, and the heart of the wife was often pained by an appearance of coldness and indifference, which seemed to chill and repulse the best affections of her nature.
Tears and remonstrance were useless, for the husband was himself unaware of the change. Was not every comfort amply provided, every request complied with? What more could any reasonable woman desire?
Alas! he knew but little of a woman's heart; of that fountain of love which is perpetually gushing forth toward him who first caused its waters to flow: and still less did he know of the fearful effect of the constant repressing of each warm affection. He dreamed not that the loving heart could become cold and dead, and that his own icy nature would soon be rejected in the devoted being who now clung to him so fondly.
It was but in little things that he was deficient, mere trifles, but still they constituted the happiness or woe of the wife of his bosom.