“How lovely she looked at the wedding, in her pale grey gown and bonnet. I love her almost as well as I love my own dear, good, indulgent mother, and I think she is the most perfect lady I ever met.” “I don’t think you’ll find her very much like the typical mother-in-law, at any rate,” replied Godfrey, gaily. They decided on driving to Swanage next morning. They would go in the landau, and bring “the mother” back with them for a day or two, if she could be persuaded to come. Juanita stifled a yawn presently, and seemed somewhat languid after her sleepless night and long day of talk and vivacity. “I am getting very stupid company,” she said. “I’ll go to bed early to-night, Godfrey, and leave you an hour’s quiet with ‘Wider Horizons.’ I know you are longing to go on with that book, but your chatterbox wife won’t let you.” Of course he protested that her society was worth more than all the books in the British Museum. He offered to take his book up to her room and read her to sleep, if she liked; but she would not have it so. “You shall have your own quiet corner and your books, just as if you were still a bachelor,” she said, caressingly, as she hung upon his shoulder for a good-night kiss. “As for me, I am utterly tired out. Janet and Sophy talked me to death; and then there was the long drive home. I shall be as fresh as ever to-morrow morning, and ready to be off to dear Lady Jane.” He went into the hall with her, and to the top of the stairs for the privilege of carrying her candlestick, and he only left her at the end of the corridor out of which her room opened. She did not ring for her maid, preferring solitude to that young person’s attendance. She did not want to be worried with elaborate hair-brushing or ceremonies of any kind. She was thoroughly exhausted with the alternations of emotion of which her life had been made up of late, and she fell asleep almost as soon as her head touched her pillow. The bedroom was over the drawing-room. Her last look from the open casement had shown her the reflection of the lights below on the terrace. She was near enough to have spoken out of the window to her husband, had she been so minded. She could picture him sitting at the table at the corner window, in his thoughtful attitude, his head bent over his book, one knee drawn up nearly to his chin, one arm hanging loosely across the arm of his low easy-chair. She had watched him thus many a time, completely absorbed in his book. She slept as tranquilly as an infant, and her dream-wanderings were all in pleasant places—with him, always with him; confused after the manner of all dreams, but with no sign of trouble.