The Bearer of Burdens by Israel Zangwill — Read

The next news that leaked into Natalya's wizened ear was as startling / as Madge's death. Henry had married again. Doubtless with the same / pretext of the children's needs he had taken unto himself a third / wife, and again without the decencies of adequate delay. And this wife / was a Jewess, as of yore. Henry had reverted matrimonially to the / fold. Was it conscience, was it terror? Nobody knew. But everybody / knew that the third Mrs. Elkman was a bouncing beauty of a good / orthodox stock, that she brought with her fifty pounds in cash, / besides bedding and house-linen accumulated by her parents without / prevision that she would marry an old hand, already provided with / these household elements.

The old clo'-woman's emotions were more mingled than ever. She felt / vaguely that the Jewish minister should not so unquestioningly have / accorded the scamp the privileges of the hymeneal canopy. Some lustral / rite seemed necessary to purify him of his Christian conjunction. And / the memory of Fanny was still outraged by this burying of her, so to / speak, under layers of successive wives. On the other hand, the / children would revert to Judaism, and they would have a Jewish mother, / not a mamma, to care for them and to love them. The thought consoled / her for being shut out of their lives, as she felt she must have been, / even had Henry been friendlier. This third wife had alienated her from / the household, had made her kinship practically remote. She had sunk / to a sort of third cousin, or a mother-in-law twice removed.