He looked at her in silence for a few moments—lost in thought. The beautiful and gracious face turned towards him in gentle inquiry had never frowned upon him in all their years of wedded life. Never had that tranquil affection failed him. There had been no dramatic passion in their love, no fierce alternations of despair and bliss—no doubts, no jealousies. His girlish wife had given herself to him in implicit trustfulness, fond of him, and proud of him, believing in him with a faith second only to her faith in God. For three and twenty years of cloudless wedded life she had made his days happy. Never in all those years had she given him reason for one hour of doubt or trouble. She had been his loving and loyal helpmate, sharing his hopes and his ambitions, caring for the people he cared for, respecting even his prejudices, shaping her life in all things to please him. Great heaven! what a contrast with that other woman, whose fiery and exacting love had made his life subordinate to hers—whose jealousy had claimed the total surrender of all other ties, of all other pleasures, had cut him off from all the advantages of society, had deprived him of the power to make friends among his fellow-men, had kept him as her bond-slave, accepting nothing less than a complete isolation from all that men hold best in life. He looked at his wife’s calm beauty—where scarce a line upon the ivory-white forehead marked the progress of years—the soft, gazelle-like eyes lifted so meekly to meet his own. He compared this placid face with that other face, handsome, too, after its fashion—long after the bloom of youth had gone—but marked in every feature with the traces of a nervous temperament, a fiery temper, the face of a woman in whose character there were none of the elements of domestic happiness—or, in a word, the face of a Strangway, the daughter of a perverse and unhappy race, from whose line no life of happiness and well-doing had arisen within the memory of man. “My dear Maria, I was wrong in not leaving a message. I was sent for to Mrs. Porter’s cottage. She has gone away in rather a mysterious manner.” “Gone away!” “Yes. That in itself is rather astonishing, you know; but there was something so strange in her manner of leaving that I feel it my duty to look after her. I shall go up to town by the midday train. I have other business which may keep me in London for a few days, till the shooting begins, perhaps. I have sent Theodore to the Priory to tell Juanita that you are going to her this afternoon, and that you will stay with her till I come back.” “That is disposing of me rather as if I were a chattel,” said his wife, smiling. “I knew you would be glad of a few days’ quiet baby-worship at the Priory, and I knew this house would be dull for you without any visitors.”