Only if it should turn out that she had been an unkind, unreasonable wife, wrongly suspicious of her husband, was she uncertain what she would do.
With dry, reddened eyes, she stared at the portrait of the woman who must have stolen John from her.

The mere arrangement of the room seemed to her excited nerves a second outrage;--Mrs.Gibbs's reception of her and all that it had implied, had been the first.

What could this strange illumination mean but that John's thoughts were taken up with his sitter in an unusual and unlawful way?
For weeks he could leave his wife without a letter, a word of affection.

But before going out for an hour, he must needs light these lamps and place them so--in order that this finicking lady should not feel herself deserted, that he should still seem to be admiring and adoring her! And after all, was she so pretty?
Phoebe looked at the pale and subtle face, at the hair and eyes so much less brilliant than her own, at the thin figure, and the repose of the hands.

Not pretty at all!--she said to herself, violently--but selfish, and artful, and full, of course, of all the tricks and wiles of 'society people.' _Didn't_ she know that John was married?
Phoebe scornfully refused to believe it.