The trouble weighed so much on my spirits that I had scarcely the heart to be glad when _Love in the Valley_ in its coat of delicate blue and silver, reached me a little before Christmas. Nor even when the first reviews were distinctly favourable. I began to grow pessimistic, I who had always been cheerful. Was there nothing but trouble in the sweet world? I asked myself as I looked about me. There was Esther breaking her heart, and we who loved her breaking ours with her in sympathy; there was Aline, looking for ever like a dove whose mate has flown; there was the dear old General, bearing like a saint and a soldier his own terrible trouble. Only the young ones were glad, and they were like lambs playing in the fields, whom every hour brought nearer to the butcher's knife. "It is time," I said to myself one day, "for something happy to happen; for very long there have been nothing but unhappy things." I spent my time now pretty well between Annagower and Rose Hill. The General at last had his house in order, and was sitting down, as he said, to enjoy life under his own fig-tree. But sometimes I thought it was a melancholy kind of enjoyment. He had been used to so active a life, and he was not of those who grow old easily. It would have suited him better to have dropped between the shafts. I used to find it lonely and melancholy when I went in during the short winter afternoons, and found him sitting there with an odd, unhappy air of doing nothing. He used to brighten wonderfully when he saw me, but I knew that the sadness would come again when I went away. Presently, I felt, things would be better with him, for he had not yet shaken down into the new life. "You must become a country gentleman," I said, "and a magistrate, and sit on boards, and farm a little. And in the intervals of your busy life you must write a book about your Indian experiences." Then he would smile, and say I was right, and that presently he would find his work to his hand and do it. But, brave and resigned as he was, I could see that the uncertainty about his son's fate was weakening the spring of life and energy in him. We had finished cataloguing the library and getting it into order, and very proud I was of my work. The house was in the most spick-and-span condition, and there was nothing left for us to do. And now I began the feast of reading which I had promised myself. Well, a day came when I bullied the General at last into getting into his cords and boots, and riding to a meet, which was at no great distance. "Every country gentleman hunts," I said; "and you are shirking the duties of your state in life by not hunting." "I was never a shirker, little girl," he replied, laughing; "and I suppose I must obey orders." "I will wait and dine with you," said I, "if you're very good, and afterwards you can drive me home."