All such conflicts of feeling had the effect of narrowing the sphere of her life, of concentrating her whole attention on, and intensifying her absorption in, her husband. A lassitude which her own good sense told her was dangerous began to take possession of her. They were better off now--she did not rightly know how, or how much, for she had gradually lapsed from her previous customary active overseeing of Routh's affairs, and had been content to take money as he gave it, and expend it as he desired, skilfully and economically, but with an entire indifference, very different from the cheerful, sunny household thriftiness which had formerly been so marked a feature in their Bohemian life, and had testified, perhaps more strongly than any other of its characteristics, to the utter deadness of the woman's conscience. His comforts were as scrupulously looked after as ever, and far more liberally provided for; but the tasteful care for her home, the indescribable something which had invested their life with the charm of a refinement contrasting strangely with its real degradation, had vanished. Harriet's manner was changed--changed to a quietude unnatural to her, and peculiarly unpleasant to Routh, who had had a scientific appreciation of the charm of steady, business-like, calm judgment and decision brought to bear on business matters; but discarded, at a moment's notice, for sparkling liveliness and a power of enjoyment which never passed the bounds of refinement in its demonstrativeness. "Eat, drink, and be merry" had been their rule of life in time that seemed strangely old to them both; and if the woman alone had sometimes remarked that the precept had a corollary, she did not care much about it. "To-morrow ye die" was an assurance which carried little terror to one absolutely without belief in a future life, and who, in this, had realized her sole desire, and lived every hour in the fulness of its realization. Stewart Routh had never had the capacity, either of heart or of intellect, to comprehend his wife thoroughly; but he had loved her as much as he was capable of loving any one, in his own way, and the strength and duration of the feeling had been much increased by their perfect comradeship. His best aid in business, his shrewd, wise counsellor in difficulty, his good comrade in pleasure, his sole confidant--it must be remembered that there was no craving for respect on the one side, no possibility of rendering it, no power of missing it, on the other--and the most cherished wife of the most respectable and worthy member of society might have compared her position with that of Harriet with considerable disadvantage on many points.