When a honeymoon has been thus disturbed the idyll is over, and the only safe thing for the two human creatures who have thus played too long the dangerous drama of Love in Idleness is to get back with as little delay as possible to common life and work. Most frequently it is the woman who retards this salutary change of scene, hoping fondly that the idyll may come back, and fearing the ordinary routine which must separate to some extent the two existences. But Isabel was not in the innocent, primitive position which could render such a delusion possible. She had thought that this alone was life, and that all that went before was a dream; but every day, as it went on, made her more and more aware that the past was no dream, that it could not be severed from her soul, or sink into annihilation, however rapturous and vivid the present might be. She sat at the window of her lodging and did her fancy work, and watched her husband’s moods, and longed to be back. Oh, to be back!--if he were but a labouring man in a cottage going out to his wholesome work, coming in to find everything prepared for him, his wife and his house bright with smiles at his approach--instead of the lounging, the caressing, the vacancy, the fits of fondness and fits of sullenness, and anxious watching of the changes of his face. ‘Did not you once speak of a farm, Horace?’ she said with a hesitation that was almost timidity, when he had himself burst forth into an angry exclamation about the dullness of the place. ‘I hate this country,’ he said, with impatience; ‘but if you have made up your mind you won’t go to America----’ ‘Indeed I never said so.’ ‘No, of course you never did; but it comes to the same thing. And by the way, I bought some of Smeaton’s stock.’ he said; ‘I thought I might have to wait and kick my heels at your door, Isabel, longer than you made me do. You were kinder than I expected. I thought I might have had to wait, and that I had better be doing something. I had forgotten all about that.’ He thought he might have had to wait! The tone in which he said it was not unkind, but there was in it that note of incipient scorn which a woman’s ear is so fine to catch. She had yielded sooner than he expected. She had been an easy conquest after all his wrongs to her! The arrow went through and through Isabel’s heart. Sudden shame and humiliation so penetrated her that all power of speech was gone for the moment. No wonder her friends, the country-side, all who knew her, should disapprove and look on her coldly--when even he---- ‘Was it a farm in our own parish you thought of?’ she cried, faltering, after a pause.