“Randolph, Randolph!” she murmured, “if you only loved me I could bear anything; but they all see it—only I am blind—it is the golden cage with its captive, and they know the ways of their world so well, so well! He bribes me with gifts, with kind words, but it is only the peaceful home and the handsome wife that he wants—not me myself, not my heart, my love. Well, he shall have what he craves. I will not disappoint him. I will do his bidding in all things. He has got his prize—let that content him—but for the wifely love, the wifely trust I have striven so to offer—he does not care for them—let them go, like these.” She pressed the flowers for a moment to her lips, and then flung them from the open casement. Randolph, lost in silent thought, standing at a window below, saw the white blossoms as they fell to the earth, and knew what they were and whence they had come. CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH. THE LITTLE RIFT. A little misunderstanding easily arises between two people not yet in perfect accord—so very soon arises, and is so difficult to lay to rest. Randolph saw plainly now, that Monica’s late gentleness had been caused simply by exhaustion and ill-health. She had submitted to his caressing care merely because she had been too weak to resist, but the first indication of restored health had been the effort to repel him. He was grieved and saddened by this conviction, but he accepted his fate with quiet patience. He would draw back a little, stand aside, as it were, and let her feel her way in the new life; and win her confidence, if he could, by slow and imperceptible degrees. He did not despair of winning her yet. He had had more than one of those rapturous moments when he had felt that she was _almost_ his. He would not give up, but he would be more self-restrained and reserved. He would not attempt too much at once. Monica was keenly conscious of the change in her husband’s manner, though she could not understand why it was that it cut her so deeply. She was conscious of the great blank in her life, and though her face was always calm and quiet, her manner gently cold and tinged with sadness, yet she tried in all things to study her husband’s wishes, and to follow out any hints he might let fall as to his tastes and feelings. She made no effort to see anything of Cecilia Bellamy, her former child-friend, and even when that vivacious little woman sought her out, and tried to strike up a great friendship, she did not respond with any ardour. Mrs. Bellamy, indeed, was not at all a woman that Monica would be inclined to cultivate at this crisis of her life; they had almost nothing in common, but the past was a sort of link that could not entirely be broken. Cecilia appeared to love to talk of Trevlyn; she was always eager to hear the latest news from thence, to recall the by-gone days of childhood, and bring back the light and colour to Monica’s face by reminiscences of the past.