In that I think I was a good wife." Mrs.Touchett added that at the end her husband apparently recognised this fact.

"He has treated me most liberally," she said; "I won't say more liberally than I expected, because I didn't expect.

You know that as a general thing I don't expect.

But he chose, I presume, to recognise the fact that though I lived much abroad and mingled--you may say freely--in foreign life, I never exhibited the smallest preference for any one else." "For any one but yourself," Madame Merle mentally observed; but the reflexion was perfectly inaudible.
"I never sacrificed my husband to another," Mrs.Touchett continued with her stout curtness.
"Oh no," thought Madame Merle; "you never did anything for another!" There was a certain cynicism in these mute comments which demands an explanation; the more so as they are not in accord either with the view--somewhat superficial perhaps--that we have hitherto enjoyed of Madame Merle's character or with the literal facts of Mrs.Touchett's history; the more so, too, as Madame Merle had a well-founded conviction that her friend's last remark was not in the least to be construed as a side-thrust at herself.

The truth is that the moment she had crossed the threshold she received an impression that Mr.Touchett's death had had subtle consequences and that these consequences had been profitable to a little circle of persons among whom she was not numbered.