The Perversity of Human Nature by Ada Cambridge

And so Robert Brown believed himself, and was believed by others, to be a widower--which was a result of her machinations that Lexie certainly had never bargained for; and a very disconsolate widower he was. Even her obdurate heart would have melted at the spectacle of his grief. In spite of their quarrels--in spite of his conviction, which equalled hers, that they were not suited to each other--he had always admired and been proud of her; and, mixed with his man's love of domestic domination, he had the true man's tenderness for the thing that he protected, and that seemed to depend upon his strength and benevolence. Then, when people are dead their faults are forgotten, while their virtues are remembered and made the most of. He thought and spoke of Lexie now as if there never had been such a woman in the world before. Her personal distinction and refinement, her intellectual superiority, her fine taste, her artistic culture--these topics became quite wearisome to Aunt Stephen and Mrs. Ponsonby, who were conscious of appearing but ordinary creatures by comparison; and not a word did they hear of her selfishness, her waywardness, her ingratitude, her general unwifeliness, though as to these shortcomings it is not to be supposed that they had not opinions of their own. Had she been the best of wives, and had she really died and been buried in the orthodox way, he could not have mourned for her in a more exemplary manner.

By and bye, however, he began to adapt himself to circumstances, as was to be expected. He could not bear, he said, the loneliness of his house, haunted as it was by the ghost of its departed mistress. Every time that he went into it its pretty things reminded him of her in a thousand ways. When he sat down to his solitary dinner the thought of the graceful figure, in its picturesque aesthetic garments, that used to face him at the opposite end of the table, robbed him of his appetite; and when he went to bed he was so surrounded by associations of her former presence that he could not sleep.