This was all. She had done nothing wrong, nothing unworthy of either herself or Dr. Grey; nothing but what hundreds of women do every day, and neither blame themselves nor are blamed by others. She had but suffered a new footstep to enter her young life's garden, without having had the courage to say of one little corner in it, "Do not tread there, it is a grave." Only a grave; a very harmless grave now, tricked with innocent, girlish flowers, but still containing the merest handful of dust. It would never corrupt, and might even serve to fertilize that simple heart, which, out of its very simplicity, had made for itself a passing idol out of what was essentially fake and base, which would have shortly crumbled to pieces out of its own baseness, had not Fate--or Providence--with kindly cruel hand forever thrown it down. Still, this was a grave, and her husband did not know it was there. Nobody ever had known. The day of delusion had been so short, and the only relics left of it were those four letters, burnt by herself on her marriage morning. The whole story, occupying in all only four weeks, had gone by exactly like a dream, and she had awakened--awakened to find out what love really was, or what it might have been. She wept, not loudly, but quietly, till she dared not weep any more. A sudden thought made her struggle at once for composure, and try to efface every external trace of tears. "I am Dr. Grey's wife," she said to herself and resolved that the grand University magnates should find out nothing in her unworthy of that name--nothing that could make people say, even the most ill-natured of them--and, alas! she had lately come to learn that the world is filled, not, as she thought, with only bad and good, but with an intermediate race, which is merely ill-natured--say, with a sneer, that Dr. Grey's second marriage had been "a mistake." Never before had Christian thought much of these outside things; but she did now--at least she tried her best. There was not a lock unsmoothed in her fair hair, not a fold awry in her silks or laces, and not a trace of agitation visible in her manner or countenance when Mrs. Grey opened her door to descend the stairs. She was considering whether it would not be courteous to knock at Miss Gascoigne's door, and ask if she too were ready, when she heard a loud outcry in the nursery above. This, alas! was no novelty. More than once Christian had rushed wildly up stairs, expecting some dreadful catastrophe, but it was only the usual warfare between Phillis and the children, especially Arthur, who was no longer a baby to be petted and scolded, or a little girl to be cowed into obedience, but a big boy to be ruled, if at all, _vi et armis_--as Mrs. Grey had more than once suspected Phillis did rule. "I wont! I won't! and you shan't make me!" was the fierce scream which caught her ear before she entered the nursery door.