It was so difficult to complain, too; impossible, in fact.  Everything that a wife could do from duty she did; but the love seemed to have fled, and, in such cases, no reproaches or complaints can avail to bring it back.  So reason outsiders, and are convinced of the result before the experiment is made.  But Philip could not reason, or could not yield to reason; and so he complained and reproached.  She did not much answer him; but he thought that her eyes expressed the old words,-

’It’s not in me to forgive; I sometimes think it’s not in me to forget.’

However, it is an old story, an ascertained fact, that, even in the most tender and stable masculine natures, at the supremest season of their lives, there is room for other thoughts and passions than such as are connected with love.  Even with the most domestic and affectionate men, their emotions seem to be kept in a cell distinct and away from their actual lives.  Philip had other thoughts and other occupations than those connected with his wife during all this time.

An uncle of his mother’s, a Cumberland ‘statesman’, of whose existence he was barely conscious, died about this time, leaving to his unknown great-nephew four or five hundred pounds, which put him at once in a different position with regard to his business.  Henceforward his ambition was roused,—­such humble ambition as befitted a shop-keeper in a country town sixty or seventy years ago.  To be respected by the men around him had always been an object with him, and was, perhaps, becoming more so than ever now, as a sort of refuge from his deep, sorrowful mortification in other directions.  He was greatly pleased at being made a sidesman; and, in preparation for the further honour of being churchwarden, he went regularly twice a day to church on Sundays.  There was enough religious feeling in him to make him disguise the worldly reason for such conduct from himself.  He believed that he went because he thought it right to attend public worship in the parish church whenever it was offered up; but it may be questioned of him, as of many others, how far he would have been as regular in attendance in a place where he was not known.  With this, however, we have nothing to do.  The fact was that he went regularly to church, and he wished his wife to accompany him to the pew, newly painted, with his name on the door, where he sate in full sight of the clergyman and congregation.

Sylvia had never been in the habit of such regular church-going, and she felt it as a hardship, and slipped out of the duty as often as ever she could.  In her unmarried days, she and her parents had gone annually to the mother-church of the parish in which Haytersbank was situated:  on the Monday succeeding the Sunday next after the Romish Saint’s Day, to whom the church was dedicated, there was a great feast or wake held; and, on the Sunday, all the parishioners came to church from far and near.  Frequently, too, in the course of the year, Sylvia would accompany one or other of her parents to Scarby Moorside afternoon service,—­when the hay was got in, and the corn not ready for cutting, or the cows were dry and there was no afternoon milking.  Many clergymen were languid in those days, and did not too curiously inquire into the reasons which gave them such small congregations in country parishes.