At first, however, it was dreadful work. Everybody seemed to be against me, not with any unkindness, but by way of worldly wisdom. “Don’t you dwell too much upon it.” “A runaway wife isn’t worth running after.” “Never you mind; but get another; try the people you know, with their friends in the place.” These were the counsels I received, with a nod of my head, and no reply. But I could not see things as others saw them. I spent the first day of my lonely life, in wandering through the crooked lanes, and working out every track and turn which my darling could have taken, in the dark mystery of her flight from me. Very often I thought that she must come back; and there was scarcely a hill that I did not run up, persuading myself that when the top was gained, there I should descry her in the distance beyond, weary, and dragging her feet along, but eager at sight of me to make a rush and fall into my longing arms. How many a corner I turned, believing that it must be the last between her and me; and how many a footpath stile I sat on, hiding my eyes that she might catch me unawares, as at blind-man’s buff, and throw her warm arms round my neck, and kiss me into shame of my mistrust, and tell me that she never could have doubted me, whatever I had done, or whatever people said! And then, when it grew too dark to see even my own love in the shadow of the lanes, and the last note of the wedded thrush (who sings to the sparkle of the stars in May) was hushed by a call from his nest, and followed by the first clear trill of the nightingale— “Who tells the deeper tale of night With passion too intense for light,” —weary, and with little heart for loneliness and doubt and woe, yet I could not be quite sure that when I opened our own door some one might not run out hotly, and give me no time to speak, but hold me lip to lip, and breast to breast, with scarcely room for a tear between us. It is the emptiness that follows such full hope that does the harm to the powers of endurance. When no one came to meet me, and the cold rooms showed grey lines of shade, with no dear life to cross them, I used to fall away, and feel my heart go down, like the water of a sink, when the plug is taken out of it. There was nothing more for it to do. My wretched life was not worth the fuss of pumping and of labouring; better to give in at once, and have no more pain to drain it.