Perhaps if Ethelyn had known all that was in his heart she might have changed her tactics and tried to have been more conciliatory on that first evening of her arrival at his home.

But Ethelyn did not know--she only felt that she was homesick and wretched--and pleading a headache, from which she was really suffering, she asked to go to her room as soon as dinner was over.
It was very pleasant up there, for a cheerful wood fire was blazing on the hearth, and a rocking-chair drawn up before it, with a footstool which Andy had made and Melinda covered, while the bed in the little room adjoining looked so fresh, and clean, and inviting, that with a great sigh of relief, as the door closed between her and the "dreadful people below," Ethelyn threw herself upon it, and burying her face in the soft pillows, tried to smother the sobs which, nevertheless, smote heavily upon Richard's ear when he came in, and drove from him all thoughts of the little lecture he had been intending to give Ethelyn touching her deportment toward his folks.

It would only be a fair return, he reflected, for all the Caudles he had listened to so patiently, and duly strengthened for his task by his mother's remark to James, accidentally overheard, "Altogether too fine a lady for us.

I wonder what Richard was thinking of," he mounted the stairs resolved at least to talk with Ethie and ask her to do better.
Richard could be very stern when he tried, and the hazel of his eye was darker than usual, and the wrinkle between his eyebrows was deeper as he thus meditated harm against his offending wife.

But the sight of the crushed form lying so helplessly upon the bed and crying in such a grieved, heart-sick way, drove all thoughts of discipline from his mind.
He could not add one iota to her misery.