"And very kind and loving. And you must know that you are much handsomer than you were before your marriage. You converse better, your manner is dignified yet gracious, your dress is rich, and in fine taste, and the touch of gray in your abundant black hair is exceedingly becoming to you. You are a fortunate woman." "But, Dora, remember how long I waited for good fortune. I am in real living only two years old; all the years before my marriage were blank and dreary. I am forty years of age according to my birth date, and I have lived two, out of the forty." "Thank God for the two years!" "I do. We both do. Sir Thomas is very religious." At length the Wyntons departed, and when Theodora had made her last adieu, and watched their carriage out of sight, she turned to her mother, who stood pale and depressed at her side. "I am glad the visit is over. It has been something of a trial to you, mother--and to me also." "The last week I was a little weary. But father and David enjoyed it, so it does not matter." "Yes, it does matter. The men in a house should not be made happy at the cost of the women's exhaustion." "How soon do you expect your husband?" "Not for eight weeks--it may be longer, and it may be never." "Do you love him at all now?" "I love the Robert who wooed and married me, as much as ever I did; the Robert of the last five or six years, I do not wish to see again. I have been away from him four years, and I cannot hope that his manner of life has improved him." "How has he lived?" "From what Isabel told me, I should say his family had full dominion over him for two years; the result being the tearing to pieces of the home he made for me, and the handing over to his sister everything that was mine. The last two years he has lived a solitary life at his club, no doubt self-indulgent, self-centred, and self-sufficient." "Theodora, no one but God knows anything about Robert. He would show himself to no one--I mean his real self. Do not judge him on the partial evidence of his sister. She would look no further than his words and actions." "I wish I had heard nothing about him. I thought he was out of my life forever." "Do not let the matter disturb you, until you are compelled to. _Grace for the need_ is sure. Nowhere have I seen, _grace before the need_ promised." "You are right, mother, we will go on with our lives just as if this visit had never happened. I will neither hope nor doubt. I will do my day's work, and leave all with God." So the Newton House went back to its calm routine, and Theodora taught and wrote, and helped her mother with her housekeeping, and her father with copying his manuscripts, and her boy with his lessons, and the days passed into weeks, and the weeks into months, and the promise of Robert's coming became as a dream when one awakeneth.