"'Marry in haste and repent at leisure,' that is what many a man has done to his cost," she soliloquized, as she bustled about her comfortable room. "Well, she is a bonny child, and he's bound to make her happy; she will be like a bit of sunshine in the old Hall if he does not damp her cheerfulness with his gloomy moods." A little while afterward, Ellerton met his little mistress wandering about the Hall, and ushered her into the damask drawing-room. Fay was looking for her husband. She had escaped from Janet, and had been seeking him some time, opening doors and stumbling into endless passages, but always making her way back somehow to the focus of light--the big hall; and feeling drearily as though she were some forlorn princess shut up in an enchanted castle, who could not find her prince. She wanted to feel his arms round her, and sob out all her strangeness; and now an ogre in the shape of the gray-haired butler had shut her up in a great, brilliantly lighted room, where the tiny, white woman saw herself reflected in the long mirrors. Fay, standing dejected and pale in the center of the room, felt like Beauty in the Beast's palace, and was dreaming out the story in her odd childish way, when the door was flung suddenly open, and the prince, in the person of Sir Hugh, made his appearance. She ran toward him with a little cry; but something in his look checked her, and she stood hesitating and coloring as he came up to her and offered his arm. "Ellerton has announced dinner," he said, quietly; "draw your scarf round you, for the Hall is cold. You look very nice, dear," he continued, kindly, looking at the dainty little bit of loveliness beside him with critically approving eyes; "you should always wear white in the evening, Fay;" and then, as they entered the dining-room, he placed her at the head of the table. Poor child, it seemed all very solemn and stately, with Ellerton and two other footmen to wait on them; to be divided from her husband by silver épergnes and choice flowers, to have to peep between the ferns and flowers for a sight of the golden-brown beard. No wonder her little talk died away, and she stammered in her replies, and then blushed and felt discomposed. She thought she was playing her part very awkwardly, and was ashamed of herself for Hugh's sake, never dreaming that the very servants who waited on her were wondering at the radiant young creature. Everything comes to an end in this world, and so did this ordeal; for after what seemed to her endless courses, the door closed on the retiring servants, and she and her husband were left alone together; and when Sir Hugh woke up from a brief musing fit he found Fay at his end of the table watching him. "Why! what brings you here, Wee Wifie?" he asked, smiling; "have you finished your grapes--am I keeping you waiting?"