The measure Madame de Pastourelles had dealt out to him, he in some sort avenged on Phoebe.
At the same time there were much more serious causes of difference.
Each had a secret from the other.

Fenwick's secret was that he had foolishly passed in London as an unmarried man, and that he could not take Phoebe back with him, because of the discomforts and risks in which a too early avowal of her would involve him.

He was morbidly conscious of this; brooded over it, and magnified it.
She on the other hand was tormented by a fixed idea--already in existence at the time of their first parting, but much strengthened by loneliness and fretting--that he was tired of her and not unwilling to be without her.

The joy of their meeting banished it for a time, but it soon came back.

She had never acquiesced in the wisdom of their separation; and to question it was to resent it more and more deeply--to feel his persistence in it a more cruel offence, month by month.