But now it was very different. Indoors meant Marion and cheerful talk, flowers and work, and books even in moderation now and then; a sweet face, and a graceful flitting figure, and tea at all hours of the day, and pipes only on sufferance! It was all so new to him, so wonderfully pretty and delicate, this atmosphere of womanhood for the first time really brought home to him, great rough clod-hopper as he called himself. And if so unspeakably charming here, in a strange, unhomelike house, what would it not be at the Manor Farm, where this sweet presence was to take root and bloom for evermore? “Till death u do part!” came into Geoffrey’s mind that afternoon, as he fidgeted about, not knowing what to do with himself, wishing she would wake, and yet afraid to go near her for fear of disturbing her. “Till death us do part!” he thought to himself. “A queer sort of life it would be without her!” After an hour or two’s patience he crept back again to her room to see if she were awake. But she was still asleep. He stood beside her for a minute or two. Just as he was turning away she awoke: awoke from her dream that the real was a dream; awoke from her sweet vision of Ralph’s dark eyes gazing down on her tenderly, to find herself back in the hateful world of facts, and Geoffrey Baldwin, her husband whom she did not love, standing at her side with a happy smile on his honest face. She glanced at him for an instant, then with a recoil of something very like actual aversion, turned from him, and closed her eyes again, as if she wished to shut out him and all beside from her sight. Geoffrey did not read correctly the expression of her face, fortunately for him. He fancied only she was wearied, or in pain, and his voice sounded anxious as he spoke to her. “Have I disturbed you, Marion dear? I was in the room more than an hour ago, but went away for fear of waking you. You don’t look well, but I hoped this sleep would have refreshed you. You are not in pain, my darling, are you?” “Yes,” she said, without moving, or opening her eyes. Considerably alarmed, Geoffrey asked eagerly “Where? How? What was the matter? Was it her head? Had she been out in the sun? Where was the pain?” “Everywhere,” she replied, in the same tone. Awful visions of rheumatic fever, neuralgia, every sort of illness of which, his experience being of the smallest, his horror was correspondingly great—flitted before poor Geoffrey’s vision. He carefully covered Marion with the shawl she had tossed aside, and, without speaking, turned to leave the room. His step across the floor roused her. “Where are you going, Geoffrey?” she asked, in a sharp, impatient tone, so unlike her own, that it increased his alarm. “To call Bentley, in the first place,” he answered, hesitatingly; “and then—” “Well, what then?” she persisted. “To go or send for a doctor,” he replied.