Christabel asked no further question. It seemed to her a great privilege to have heard even so much as this. There was very little hope that in her road of life she would often come so nearly on her lost lover's footsteps. She was too wise to desire that they should ever meet face to face--that she, Leonard's wife, should ever again be moved by the magic of that voice, thrilled by the pathos of those dreamy eyes; but it was a privilege to hear something about him she had lost, to know what spot of earth held him, what skies looked down upon him. CHAPTER VIII. "I HAVE PUT MY DAYS AND MY DREAMS OUT OF MIND." It was the end of May, when Christabel and her husband went back to England and to Mount Royal. Leonard wanted to stay in London for the season, and to participate in the amusements and dissipation of that golden time; but this his wife most steadfastly refused. She would be guilty of no act which could imply want of respect for her beloved dead. She would not make her curtsy to her sovereign in her new character of a matron, or go into society, within the year of her aunt's death. "You will be horribly moped in Cornwall," remonstrated Leonard. "Everything about the place will remind you of my poor mother. We shall be in the dolefuls all the year." "I would rather grieve for her, than forget her," answered Christabel. "It is too easy to forget." "Well, you must have your own way, I suppose. You generally do," retorted Leonard, churlishly; "and, after having dragged me about a lot of mouldy old French towns, and made me look at churches, and Roman baths, and the sites of ancient circuses, until I hated the very name of antiquity, you will expect me to vegetate at Mount Royal for the next six months." "I don't see any reason why a quiet life should be mere vegetation," said Christabel; "but if you would prefer to spend part of the year in London I can stay at Mount Royal." "And get on uncommonly well without me," cried Leonard. "I perfectly comprehend your meaning. But I am not going in for that kind of thing. You and I must not offer the world another example of the semi-attached couple; or else people might begin to say you had married a man you did not care for." "I will try and make your life as agreeable as I can at the Manor, Leonard," Christabel answered, with supreme equanimity--it was an aggravation to her husband that she so rarely lost her temper--"so long as you do not ask me to fill the house with visitors, or to do anything that might look like want of reverence for your mother's memory." "Look!" ejaculated Leonard. "What does it matter how things look? We both know that we are sorry for having lost her--that we shall miss her more or less every day of our lives--visitors or no visitors. However, you needn't invite any people. I can rub on with a little fishin' and boatin'."