Heather made no answer, but, turning a little towards the window, removed her face from Miss Hope’s observation. Had she gone through it; had she ever held such a power over Arthur as this indicated; had she herself even ever gone through the heat and the cold, the crater and the snowdrift; had she ever smiled those smiles, and wept those tears, which a woman only smiles and weeps when she is dreaming her love-dreams; was this mystery, which she had been groping about after blindly for years, going to be revealed to her at last; was what Miss Hope said true; was the love-play that she saw acted out every hour before her eyes, true but as regarded one of the performers in it? If it were so, what then had that play been which decided the fate of her own life—a farce, a tragedy—which? Was light, after the blessed darkness of years, only breaking to reveal to her this? Were other human lives but mirrors reflecting back the sad, pitiful face of her own married experience? What had come to her—what was coming to her? Knowledge! and, with an undefined dread of what knowledge might bring with it, Heather, standing by the open window, looking adown the smooth green slope, and so away to the far still country lying off in the distance, silently prayed that she might hear and understand no more—that as knowledge had come so late, it might never come at all. It was growing upon her that Arthur did not love her—had never loved her. Everybody said he did not guess how good a wife had fallen to his share; and little as, in her modesty, she believed there was to call “good” about her, still Heather thought that if Arthur really cared for her he would overrate rather than underrate her better qualities, and try to be satisfied with her endeavours to please him. Instead of which, let her do what she would, Arthur found fault; before strangers, too, who took her part, and thus drove the nail home. “I cannot think what has changed him so much,” the poor wife thought, her eyes filled with tears that prevented her seeing any object distinctly. “He used to be so different;” which was true to this extent, namely, that the writing on Arthur Dudley’s mind had remained almost undistinguishable till it came to be passed through the social fire, which made every character traced on it clear even to eyes that would rather not have read there any word, likely in the future to affect injuriously Heather’s happiness or Heather’s peace. “And another thing,”—it was Miss Hope again speaking, which brought Heather back from a long vague journey to the realities of life—“I would not have that Mr. Black staying here; of course, as I said before, you know your own business best, but I know how it will all end. That man and Mrs. Ormson, between them, will make Arthur dissatisfied.” “He has long been so,” remarked Heather.