When Lucinda had returned to her bedside duties, Nora wandered about the house with a soundless tread, taking melancholy note of the preparations Roger had made for her return. His choice, his taste, his ingenuity, were everywhere visible. The best beloved of her possessions from the old house in the country had been transferred hither and placed in such kindly half-lights as would temper justice with mercy; others had found expensive substitutes. Nora went into the drawing-room, where the blinds were closed and the chairs and sofas shrouded in brown linen, and sat sadly revolving possibilities. How, with Roger’s death, loneliness again would close about her; how he was her world, her strength, her fate! He had made her life; she needed him still to watch his work. She seemed to apprehend, as by a sudden supernatural light, the extent of his affection and his wisdom. In the perfect stillness of the house she could almost hear his tread on the stairs, hear his voice utter her name with that tender adjustment of tone which conveyed a benediction in a commonplace. Her heart rose to her throat; she felt a passionate desire to scream. She buried her head in a cushion to stifle the sound; her silent tears fell upon the silk. Suddenly she heard a step in the hall; she had only time to brush them away before Hubert Lawrence came in. He greeted her with surprise. “I came to bring your note,” he said: “I did not expect to find you.’” “Where better should I be?” she asked, with intensity. “I can do nothing here, but I should look ill elsewhere. Give me back my note, please. It does not say half I feel.” He gave it back, and stood watching her while she tore it in bits and threw it into the empty fireplace. “I have been wandering over the house,” she added. “Everything tells me of poor Roger.” She felt an indefinable need of protesting of her affection for him. “I never knew till now,” she said, “how much I loved him. I am sure you don’t know him, Hubert; not as I do. I don’t believe any one does. People always speak of him with a little air of amusement. Even Mrs. Keith is witty at his expense. But I know him; I grew to know him in thinking of him while I was away. There is more of him than the world knows or than the world would ever know, if it were left to his modesty and the world’s stupidity!” Hubert began to smile at her eloquence. “But I mean to put an end to his modesty. I mean to say, ‘Come, Roger, hold up your head and speak out your mind and do yourself justice.’ I have seen people without a quarter of his goodness who had twenty times his assurance and his success. I shall turn the tables! People shall have no favor from me, unless they are good to Roger. If they want me, they must take him too. They tell me I am a beauty, and I can do what I please. We shall see. The first thing I shall do will be to make them show him a great deal of respect.”