“Ill? Not I!” recovering himself with an effort. “It is probably your friend the goose walking over my grave.” “Don’t talk of graves,” she said with a shudder, drawing nearer to him involuntarily, and laying her hand on his shoulder. “You don’t know,” she added in a low voice, “what a good wife I am going to be. You have given me back my wedding-ring, and in return I promise solemnly to be truthful, loving, and obedient as long as I live. Nothing but death can ever come between us now,” she added tremulously, as, stealing her arm round his neck, she gave him the tenderest and shyest of kisses. “You little witch!” he exclaimed, returning it with interest. “Do you know that that is almost the first kiss you have ever given me of your own accord, Lady Fairfax? What a change a few hours can make in one’s life! This morning, mine seemed so empty, so cheerless; just what it has been for the last three years. I had no one to look after, or care about much, except myself, and I am not very fond of myself; sometimes, I know all my faults quite as well, nay, far better than you do.” “What are they?” she asked with a smile. “Let us compare notes.” “I am determined to the verge of obstinacy, and beyond it. Proud to a degree little short of insanity. Overbearing, supercilious, tenacious, I would die sooner than yield, once I have made up my mind that I am in the right. If I had been less blinded by my pride, I would have written to you when Maurice was born, and saved us both two long miserable years. How can I ever make amends to you, my darling? How can I ever overtake these years I have left you alone?” “Hush!” she said, “you must not abuse yourself. It has been all my fault from first to last; it is only like you to take the blame, but you know very well it all lies at _my_ door. But, indeed, indeed I have been punished, and justly punished! I ought to have trusted you, Reginald; if I had followed my first impulse I would have spared myself many a bitter tear. I seem to have been under some malign influence, and to have had an absolute vocation for making you and myself miserable, that awful winter that seems so many years ago. Since then, Time has crawled by and brought no remedies for _me_--a blank empty future, and nothing to look back on but hateful haunting recollections; only for Maurice I must have gone melancholy mad. You will never leave me again, will you? “You won’t go to Looton now?” she added suddenly. “Yes; in fact I must. I’ll run down there for a few days and see how everything is getting on, look into the accounts, ride over the home farm, etc., and tell them to be ready for us at Christmas.” “At Christmas?” she echoed in amazement. “Yes. I shall then come back here and take you off abroad for the next three months. You were talking of Nice the other day: will you accept _me_ as a companion instead of your aunt? How would you like to spend the autumn in Italy?” “And Maurice?”