While she was dressing for it, the evening party ceased to be terrible even in Christian’s imagination.  She kept thinking over and over the talk she had had with Dr. Grey; what he had said, and what she had said, of which she was a little ashamed that her impetuous impulse had faded.  Yet why?  Why should she not speak out her heart to her own husband?  It began to be less difficult to do; for, though he did not answer much, he never misunderstood her, never responded with those sharp, cold, altogether wide-of-the-mark observations which, in talking with Miss Gascoigne or Miss Grey, made her feel that they and she looked at things from points of view as opposite as the poles.

“They can’t help that; neither, I am sure, can I,” she often thought.  And yet how, thus diverse, they should all live under the same roof together for months and years to come, was more than Christian could conceive.

Besides, now, she had at times a new feeling—­a wish to have her husband all to herself.  She ceased to need the “shadowy third”—­the invisible barricade against total dual solitude made by aunts or children.  She would have been glad sometimes to send them all away, and spend a quiet evening hour, such as the last one, alone with Dr. Grey.  It was so pleasant to talk to him—­so comfortable.  The comfort of it lasted in her heart all through her elaborate dressing, which was rather more weariness to her than to most young women of her age.

Letitia assisted thereat—­poor Titia who, being sent for, had crept down to her step-mother’s room, very humble and frightened, and received a few tender, serious words—­not many, for the white face was sodden with crying, and there was a sullen look upon it which not all Christian’s gentleness could chase away.  Phillis had discovered her absence, and had punished her; not with whipping, that was forbidden, but with some of the innumerable nursery tyrannies which Phillis called government.  And Titia evidently thought, with the suspiciousness of all weak, cowed creatures, that Mrs. Grey must have had some hand in it—­that she had broken her promise, and betrayed her to this punishment.

She stood aloof, poor little girl, tacitly doing as she was bidden, and acquiescing in every thing, with her thin lips pressed into that hopeless line, or now and then opening to give vent to sharp, unchildlike speeches, so exceedingly like Aunt Henrietta’s.

“Those are very pretty bracelets, but yours are not nearly so big as poor mamma’s, and you don’t wear half so many.”

Was it that inherent feminine quality, tact or spite, according as it is used, which teaches women to find out, and either avoid or wound one another’s sore places, which made the little girl so often refer to “poor mamma?” Or had she been taught to do it?

Christian could not tell.  But it had to be borne, and she was learning how to bear it, she answered kindly.

“Probably I do wear fewer ornaments than your mamma did, for she was rich, and I was poor.  Indeed, I have no ornaments to wear except what your papa has given me.”