“Hyacinth, do you not see that he is unhappy?” Angela asked, suddenly, and the pain in her voice startled her sister from the contemplation of the sublime Mandane. “Unhappy, child! What reason has he to be unhappy?” “Ah, dearest, it is that I would have you discover. ’Tis a wife’s business to know what grieves her husband.” “Unless it be Mrs. Lewin’s bill—who is an inexorable harpy—I know of no act of mine that can afflict him.” “I did not mean that his gloom was caused by any act of yours, sister. I only urge you to discover why he is so sad.” “Sad? Sullen, you mean. He has a fine, generous nature. I am sure it is not Lewin’s charges that trouble him. But he had always a sullen temper—by fits and starts.” “But of late he has been always silent and gloomy.” “How the child watches him! Ma très chère, that silence is natural. There are but two things Fareham loves—the first, war; the second, sport. If he cannot be storming a town, he loves to be killing a fox. This fireside life of ours—our books and music, our idle talk of plays and dances—wearies him. You may see how he avoids us—except out-of-doors.” “Dear Hyacinth, forgive me!” Angela began, falteringly, leaving her embroidery frame and moving to the other side of the hearth, where she dropped on her knees by her ladyship’s chair, and was almost swallowed up in the ample folds of her brocade train. “Is it not possible that Lord Fareham is pained to see you so much gayer and more familiar with Monsieur de Malfort than you ever are with him?” “Gayer! more familiar!” cried Hyacinth. “Can you conceive any creature gay and familiar with Fareham? One could as soon be gay with Don Quixote; indeed, there is much in common between the knight of the rueful countenance and my husband. Gay and familiar! And pray, mistress, why should I not take life pleasantly with a man who understands me, and in whose friendship I have grown up almost as if we were brother and sister? Do you forget that I have known Henri ever since I was ten years old—that we played battledore and shuttlecock together in our dear garden in the Rue de Touraine, next the bowling-green, when he was at school with the Jesuit Fathers, and used to spend all his holiday afternoons with the Marquise? I think I only learnt to know the saints’ days because they brought me my playfellow. And when I was old enough to attend the Court—and, indeed, I was but a child when I first appeared there—it was Henri who sang my praises, and brought a crowd of admirers about me. Ah, what a life it was! Love in the city, and war at the gates: plots, battles, barricades! How happy we all were! except when there came the news of some great man killed, and walls were hung with black, where there had been a thousand wax candles and a crowd of dancers. Châtillon, Chabot, Laval! _Hélas_, those were sad losses!”