Emily Phillips had never been like the other Woodford girls and had no friends of her own age among them . Her uncommon beauty won her many lovers , but she had never cared for any of them until Stephen Fair , fifteen years her senior , had come a-wooing to the old , gray , willow-girdled Phillips homestead . Amelia and John Phillips never liked him . There was an ancient feud between the families that had died out among the younger generation , but was still potent with the older . From the first Emily had loved Stephen . Indeed , deep down in her strange , wayward heart , she had cared for him long before the memorable day when he had first looked at her with seeing eyes and realized that the quiet , unthought-of child who had been growing up at the old Phillips place had blossomed out into a woman of strange , seraph-like beauty and deep grey eyes whose expression was nevermore to go out of Stephen Fair 's remembrance from then till the day of his death . John and Amelia Phillips put their own unjustifiable dislike of Stephen aside when they found that Emily 's heart was set on him . The two were married after a brief courtship and Emily went out from her girlhood 's home to the Fair homestead , two miles away . Stephen 's mother lived with them . Janet Fair had never liked Emily . She had not been willing for Stephen to marry her . But , apart from this , the woman had a natural , ineradicable love of making mischief and took a keen pleasure in it . She loved her son and she had loved her husband , but nevertheless , when Thomas Fair had been alive she had fomented continual strife and discontent between him and Stephen . Now it became her pleasure to make what trouble she could between Stephen and his wife . She had the advantage of Emily in that she was always sweet-spoken and , on the surface , sweet-tempered . Emily , hurt and galled in a score of petty ways , so subtle that they were beyond a man 's courser comprehension , astonished her husband by her fierce outbursts of anger that seemed to him for the most part without reason or excuse . He tried his best to preserve the peace between his wife and mother ; and when he failed , not understanding all that Emily really endured at the elder woman 's merciless hands , he grew to think her capricious and easily irritated -- a spoiled child whose whims must not be taken too seriously . To a certain extent he was right . Emily had been spoiled . The unbroken indulgence which her brother and sister had always accorded her had fitted her but poorly to cope with the trials of her new life .
True , Mrs. XXXXX was an unpleasant woman to live with , but if Emily had chosen to be more patient under petty insults , and less resentful of her husband 's well-meant though clumsy efforts for harmony , the older woman could have effected real little mischief .
Emily Fair Phillips Stephen a-wooing courser first girlhood right years