tell how I did it. Of all the wonders in my life, there is none like that. I can fancy how I was led on to consent to be married; but how did I ever go downstairs and do my sewing, and eat my dinner, and look Aunt Connor in the face? I suppose I must have done it somehow without making them suspect anything; and I don’t wonder my aunt called me a little hypocrite. What a hypocrite I must have been! I did not see Harry next day, and felt very miserable; cold, as if a sudden frost had come on in the middle of summer. But the next morning after, looking out of my window very early, who should I see looking up at the house but himself! That moment I got back into the sun. We belonged to each other; everything, even to the dress I had on, Harry was pleased to know about. Ah, what a difference! I cannot say anything else, though it may be very improper. After that moment I never was ashamed again of what I had done, nor frightened, nor sorry. If it was wrong, it’s a pity, and I don’t defend myself; but from that time I thought only that I had somebody belonging to me; that I dared not get ill, or mope, or die, or do any foolish thing; that I had Harry to think of, and do for, and take care of. Ah, that was different from doing Aunt Connor’s messages. It was not being married, it was being born--it was coming to life. CHAPTER III. You are not to suppose, however, that we did not pay for our foolishness. If I had been a well-brought up girl living at home, I should have been perfectly wretched in that strange, feverish, secret life in which everything felt like guilt; and, as it was, the excitement and feeling of secrecy wore me out day by day. Poor Harry, too, got quite harassed and wretched looking. This that we had done certainly did not make us happy. Harry still came to the house for the chance of seeing me; and imagine what I felt to know that he was in the drawing-room, and _I, his wife_, sitting upstairs, after the little children had gone to bed, sewing in the quiet nursery! I don’t know how I ever endured it; and to hear Alicia and Patricia next morning saying to each other what a bear that young Langham had grown! Once or twice, when I was allowed to be downstairs, it was worse and worse. If one of the other gentlemen so much as looked at me, Harry flushed up and looked furious. Twenty times in a night I thought he would have interfered and made a scene; but all the time we dared scarcely speak to each other; and I am sure Aunt Connor never thought we were flirting then. When I went out, as before, on my aunt’s errands, with my veil down, Harry, instead of being pleased to meet me, as he used to be, was so cross and unhappy that it was quite dreadful to be with him. And he would come about the house looking up at the windows at all kinds of improper times, quite in an open way, as if he were defying Aunt Connor. I was quite in a fever night and day; I never knew what might happen any minute.