“Not quite that,” said she gently, but with no more warmth than before. “Practically I am,” he persisted. “She was an heiress, I a ruined spendthrift, when she married me. Yet she trusted me; and the only condition she would allow her friends to make was that I should settle in the country--out of the reach of temptation, you see, Miss Christie.” He spoke with some feeling, and looked affectionately at his wife at the end of this unexpectedly frank confession; but she remained as impassive as ever. I could not help feeling rather sorry for Mr. Rayner. He was always kind and attentive to his wife; but, whether he was in a bright mood, and tried to make her smile, or silent, and needing to be roused out of his gravity, she was always the same, limp, nerveless, apathetic, speaking when necessary in a low soft voice, slowly, with many pauses. She had a habit of letting the last words of a sentence die away upon her lips, and then, after a few moments, as if by an effort, she would say them aloud. I soon grew quite afraid of her, started if I met her unexpectedly, and felt more restrained in her presence than if she had been one of those brilliant satirical women who take the color out of the rest of their sex. Anxious to shake off this strange diffidence, which was beginning to cast a shadow over my life, I offered to read to her when my short hours of study with my pupil were over. She accepted my offer, and I went into the drawing-room that very afternoon and read her some chapters of _Adam Bede_, while she sat in a rocking-chair, with a piece of embroidery making slow progress in the thin white fingers. I stopped at the end of each chapter, waiting for the comment which never came, and rather hoping for some little compliment upon my reading, an accomplishment I took pride in. But she only said “Thank you” very gently, and, when I asked her if I should go on, “Yes, if it will not tire you.” Presently I found out that she was not listening, except for a few minutes at a time, but that she was sitting with her hands in her lap listlessly playing with her embroidery, while her eyes were fixed on the garden outside, with a deep sadness in them which contrasted strangely with her usual apathetic indifference to all things. Still I read on, pretending not to notice her mood, until such a heavy despairing sigh broke from her pale lips that my heart beat fast for pity, and I involuntarily stopped short in my reading, and raised my eyes, with tears in them, to hers. She started, and, turning towards me, seemed to hold my eyes for a moment fixed on hers by the fascination of a gaze which seemed anxious to penetrate to the deepest recesses of my thoughts. A little color came to her cheeks; I could see her breast heaving through the muslin gown she wore; she half stretched out one hand towards me, and in another moment I believe she would have called me to her side, when a voice from behind her chair startled us both.