sake, and for mine. I don't say that they would
distress you, or distress me— I wouldn't have
you think that for the world. But— I want
to be so happy, now I have got you back
again; and I want you to be so happy too ——"
She broke off abruptly, and looked round the
room, my own sitting-room, in which we were
talking. "Ah!" she cried, clapping her hands
with a bright smile of recognition, "another old
friend found already! Your bookcase, Marian
— your dear-little-shabby-old-satin-wood bookcase
how glad I am you brought it with you
from Limmeridge! And your workbox, just as
untidy as ever! And the horrid, heavy, man's
umbrella, that you always would walk out with
when it rained! And, first and foremost of all,
your own dear, dark, clever, gipsy-face, looking
at me just as usual! It is so like home again
to be here. How can we make it more like home
still? I will put my father's portrait in your
room instead of in mine— and I will keep all my
little treasures from Limmeridge here— and we
will pass hours and hours every day with these
four friendly walls round us. Oh, Marian!"
she said, suddenly seating herself on a footstool
at my knees, and looking up earnestly in my
face, " promise you will never marry, and leave
me. It is selfish to say so, but you are so much
better off as a single woman— unless— unless you
are very fond of your husband— but you won't be
very fond of anybody but me, will you?" She
stopped again; crossed my hands on my lap;
and laid her face on them. "Have you been
writing many letters, and receiving many letters,
lately?" she asked, in low, suddenly-altered
tones. I understood what the question meant;
but I thought it my duty not to encourage her
by meeting her half way. "Have you heard
from him?" she went on, coaxing me to forgive
the more direct appeal on which she now ventured,
by kissing my hands, upon which her
face still rested. "Is he well and happy, and
getting on in his profession? Has he recovered
himself— and forgotten me?"

She should not have asked those questions.
She should have remembered her own resolution,
on the morning when Sir Percival held her
to her marriage engagement, and when she
resigned the book of Hartright's drawings into
my hands for ever. But, ah me! where is the
faultless human creature who can persevere in a
good resolution, without sometimes failing and
falling back? Where is the woman who has
ever really torn from her heart the image that
has been once fixed in it by a true love? Books
tell us that such unearthly creatures have existed
— but what does our own experience say in
answer to books?

I made no attempt to remonstrate with her:
perhaps, because I sincerely appreciated the
fearless candour which let me see, what other
women in her position might have had reasons
for concealing even from their clearest friends
— perhaps, because I felt, in my own heart
and conscience, that, in her place I should have
asked the same questions and had the same
thoughts. All I could honestly do was to
reply that I had not written to him or heard
from him lately, and then to turn the conversation
to less dangerous topics.

There had been much to sadden me in our
interview— my first confidential interview with
her since her return. The change which her
marriage has produced in our relations towards
each other, by placing a forbidden subject between
us, for the first time in our lives; the
melancholy conviction of the dearth of all
warmth of feeling, of all close sympathy, between
her husband and herself, which her own
unwilling words now force on my mind; the
distressing discovery that the influence of that
ill-fated attachment still remains (no matter
how innocently, how harmlessly) rooted as
deeply as ever in her heart— all these are disclosures
to sadden any woman who loves her as
dearly, and feels for her as acutely, as I do. There
is only one consolation to set against them—
a consolation that ought to comfort me, and
that does comfort me. All the graces and gentlenesses
of her character; all the frank affection
of her nature; all the sweet, simple, womanly
charms which used to make her the
darling and the delight of every one who
approached her, have come back to me with herself.
Of my other impressions I am sometimes
a little inclined to doubt. Of this last, best,
happiest of all impressions, I grow more and
more certain, every hour in the day.

Let me turn, now, from her to her travelling
companions. Her husband must engage my
attention first. What have I observed in Sir Percival,
since his return, to improve my opinion of
him?

I can hardly say. Small vexations and annoyances
seem to have beset him since he came
back; and no man, under those circumstances,
is ever presented at his best. He looks, as I
think, thinner than he was when he left England.
His wearisome cough and his comfortless
restlessness have certainly increased. His
manner— at least, his manner towards me— is
much more abrupt than it used to be. He
greeted me, on the evening of his return, with
little or nothing of the ceremony and civility of
former times— no polite speeches of welcome—
no appearance of extraordinary gratification at
seeing me nothing but a short shake of the
hand, and a sharp "How-d'ye-do, Miss Halcombe
glad to see you again. He seemed to
accept me as one of the necessary fixtures of
Blackwater Park; to be satisfied at finding me
established in my proper place; and then to pass
me over altogether.

Most men show something of their dispositions
in their own houses, which they have concealed
elsewhere; and Sir Percival has already
displayed a mania for order and regularity,
which is quite a new revelation of him, so far as
my previous knowledge of his character is concerned.
If I take a book from the library and
leave it on the table, he follows me, and puts it
back again. If I rise from a chair, and let it
remain where I have been sitting, he carefully
restores it to its proper place against the wall.