As a lawyer he had expressed himself as willing always to take the lady's side; but in the cases which he actually took he liked to believe that the wife was perfect and the husband inexcusable.

He could not comfort himself with any such belief in his daughter's case.
Adelaide's conduct had been, as far as he could see, irreproachable; but, then, so had Severance's.

This was what had made the gossip, almost the scandal, of the thing.

Even his sister Alberta had whispered to him that if Severance had been unfaithful to Adelaide--But poor Severance had not been unfaithful; he had not even become indifferent.

He loved his wife, he said, as much as on the day he married her.