But, before he had reached the door. Harry passed him with a rough push and an oath. The shock had sobered the lad for the time; but he had been drinking since to drown his remorse. However, he was so familiar with the stable as to be able almost by instinct to find what he wanted; he put saddle and bridle himself on to the fastest horse there, and, once in the saddle, he was all right, for, drunk or sober, Harry could ride. He got back before the doctor, and ran, all breathless, heated, and splashed, up the stairs to the door of the room, into which Annie had been taken, knocked as softly as he could, and opened the door. She was lying on the bed, and his mother and the housekeeper were with her. They made gestures to him to go back; but he stood there, his face all quivering with wistful anxiety. “Only let me just say one word to her,” pleaded he, hoarsely. He was panting still from the speed with which he had come. Annie, who had been lying half-unconscious, opened her eyes and turned to Lady Braithwaite with a low cry: “Don’t let him come near me!” she whispered. But Harry heard; and he slunk out of the room, stunned as no physical blow could have stunned him. Annie lay ill for weeks, and in all that time no messages, no entreaties would induce her to see her husband. The only glimpses he got of her were by stealth, when she was asleep. For the sweet hope of being a mother, which had made her secretly, silently happy under all his neglect, had now been taken from her, and she felt that it was his brutality which had snatched away the one joy her wretched marriage had brought her. Lady Braithwaite tried to soothe her mind and induce her to forgive her husband. But the submissive daughter-in-law was strong in her weakness; and no persuasion on the part of the elder lady, who had now grown as kind as she had formerly been cold, could extract more than: “Tell him I forgive him; but don’t let me see him.” She was so obstinate in this decision that, even when she was well enough to be carried down-stairs, she refused to move from her room, and the women about her knew that it was the dread of meeting her husband which kept her a prisoner. So that Lady Braithwaite had to make her way to Harry’s room one night, and persuade him to go away for a time. It was a difficult task for a mother, for the lad’s passion broke out vehemently in alternate fits against his wife and of fondness for her. First he said he would go to the ends of the earth, if that would do her any good, and the next minute he swore she was a hard, ungrateful little vixen, and deserved to have her ears boxed. However, at last Lady Braithwaite carried her point; and he agreed to go away for a fortnight to some relatives of hers in Leicestershire--no very great hardship, in truth, as the hunting-season was not yet over.