being had sustained a nameless yet palpable change; she did not show him coldness, nor aversion, but there was a wistful sadness, which gradually grew into a dejection–a quiet sorrow which at times tortured him. It was very soon after she had learnt that she was to become a mother that this change became apparent in Nita. It was in vain that he lavished upon her every outward care and attention; that he watched her footsteps, and hung upon her looks, and attended her wherever she went. It was in vain that he would refuse invitations and tell her he did not care to go out until she could go out again too; in vain that he gratified, and even tried to anticipate her every wish: she faded and drooped before his eyes. And he dared not go beyond this outward form of devotion. He dared not ask the reason of the inward grief that consumed her, because he knew what the answer would be. He was perfectly satisfied that she knew something–how much he knew not, and that again he dared not ask–but something she knew of the deceit he had practised towards her; that he had taken her for his wife holding a lie in his right hand. The position grew terrible, even ghastly to him. Sometimes he wished that she would reproach him; tell him what she knew, ask him why he had treated her so–then he could at least have promised that since they were bound together, he would never deceive her any more, but would honestly devote his life to making her happy. But Nita never did anything of the kind. She was most gentle, and seemed to shrink in every way from giving him pain. With unstinting hand and ample generosity she asserted his rights in everything, and showed the most boundless confidence in him; making a point, if anything of the slightest importance were referred to her, of saying that she knew nothing about it, they must ask Mr. Wellfield. She never appeared to shrink from being alone with him, though, when it happened that they were alone, she would sit for hours silent, unless he spoke. When he talked to her she always tried to keep up the conversation. But she was woefully and mournfully changed. Between her and Avice existed a great, if not a demonstrative friendship. Jerome was thankful for it, and that his wife and his sister had no unseemly disputes. The only times when Nita was really bright, or at all like her old self, were those occasions on which her father was with them. Then she would collect her energies (and Jerome painfully felt that her gaiety was the result of such a collecting of energy, and not spontaneous), and be even merry, and that so exactly in her old manner that her father never suspected anything wrong, and put down her somewhat wan face and languid movements to her physical condition. ‘Are you happy, my child?’ he asked one afternoon, when he and she were strolling beside the river. This was very shortly before his death.