And she pointed at her reflection in the glass, which showed her yellow hair negligently looped behind with a piece of blue ribbon, with stray curls sunning over her white forehead, and streaming down her back. She seemed, and she was, I am sure, perfectly happy. The gardeners took to her at once; and I would often see one or the other of them following her about to listen to her directions, touching his cap so often as he received her wishes; and yet, spite of his respectful manner, hinting by his behaviour that he thought her rather more of a child than a woman. She had wanted to bring her own maid Lucy along with her, but the two servants and Mrs. Williams were enough for our wants. So Lucy returned to the village with the promise of filling the next vacancy in Elmore Court. I purchased a phaeton and a smart little mare, and would drive Geraldine long excursions into the country. The memory of those days is very fresh. She seems to be at my side while I write, her large luminous eyes fixed on my face, her small white hand on my neck, interrupting me with the musical lilt of her voice to tell me of a bright-plumed bird that is drinking at the fountain. You do not ask me what had become of the fine resolutions that had brought me to Cliffegate. You know, for you have doubtless experienced, that love is too absorbing a business to admit of any other occupation. The living freshness of my wife's society made my library a kind of mausoleum; and if I preferred basking in the luxury of her beauty to handling the dusty skeletons which lined the shelves, you will not be surprised. At the time of forming my resolutions I had never contemplated marrying; and now that I _had_ married, my wife, for the time being at all events, fully satisfied the craving for occupation, for something to live for, which I had hoped ambition might have appeased. Yet I did not despair of waking one morning with a strong impulse to study. The fact of my life being no longer companionless would disarm the fears of ambition; and I felt that, should I fail in the attempt to distinguish myself hereafter, disappointment would be qualified, if indeed not obviated, by the knowledge that I had always by my side some one to love and who loved me, and whose happiness it would be a joyous occupation to minister to.