Then the door opened, and the light showed her to him pale, with lips tight pressed from the pain of her injury. Instantly he forgot everything but his natural pity and chivalry towards women. He led her in, and half carried her upstairs. A little later she was resting on her bed, and he had done everything he could for her till the doctor should come. She seemed to have passed into an eclipse of temper or moodiness, and he got little gratitude. The evening post brought her a letter which he took up to her himself. He knew the clear, rapid hand, and he knew, too, that Letty had received many such during the preceding month. He stood beside her a moment, almost on the point of asking her to let him see it. But the words died on his lips. And, perceiving that she would not read it while he was there, he went away again. When he returned, carrying a new book and asking if he should read to her, he found her lying with her cheek on her hand, staring into the fire, and so white and miserable that his heart sank. Had he married her, a girl of twenty-four, only to destroy her chance of happiness altogether? A kind of terror seized him. He had been "good to her," so far as she and his business had allowed him, since their return; there had been very little outward jarring; but no one knew better than he that there had not been one truly frank or reconciling moment. His own inner life during these weeks had passed in one obscure continuous struggle--a sort of dull fever of the soul. And she had simply held herself aloof from him. He knelt down beside her, and laid his face against hers. "Don't look so unhappy!" he said in a whisper, caressing her free hand. She did not answer or make any response till, as he got up again in a kind of despair as to what to do or say next, she hastily asked: "Has the constable been up here to see you?" He looked at her in surprise. "Yes. It is all arranged. The lad will be brought up before the magistrates on Thursday." She fidgeted, then said abruptly: "I should like him to be let off." He hesitated. "That's very nice of you, but it wouldn't be very good for the district." She did not press the matter, but as he moved away she said fretfully: "I wish you'd read to me. The pain's horrid." Thankful, in his remorse, to do anything for her, he tried to amuse and distract her as he best could. But in the middle of a magazine story she interrupted him: "Isn't it the day after to-morrow your mother's coming?" "According to her letter this morning." He put down the book. "But I don't think you'll be at all fit to look after her. Shall I write to-night and suggest that she stays in London a little?" "No. I shall be all right, the doctor says. I want to tell Esther"--Esther was the housemaid--"_not_ to get the Blue Room ready for her. I looked in to-day, and it seemed damp. The back room over the dining-room is smaller, but it's much warmer." She turned to look at him with a rather flushed face.