Everything I wished her to do seemed to be a pleasure to her; and mind and body grew rapidly so vigorous that I lost all fear for her. She said she was a new creature, and she looked it.

When we had been married about a year, Sir Shadwell Rock came to pay us a visit. Evadne was quite at her best then, and I introduced her to him triumphantly.

He asked about her progress with kindly interest when we were alone together, and declared heartily that she was certainly to all appearance thoroughly restored, that he was quite in love with her himself, and hoped to see her in the van of the new movement yet.

She took to the dear old man, and told him his great reputation did not frighten her one bit; and she would lean on his arm familiarly out in the grounds, pelt him with gorse blossom, fill his pockets with rose leaves surrept.i.tiously, till they bulged out like bags behind, and keep him smiling perpetually at her pretty ways. He had been going abroad for a holiday, but we persuaded him to stay with us instead, and when we parted with him at last reluctantly, he declared that Evadne had made him young again, and the wrinkles were all smoothed out.

His last words to me were: "So far so good, Galbraith," and I knew he meant to warn as well as to congratulate. "Don't keep her in cotton wool too much. Make her face sickness and suffering while she is well herself.

Take warning by the small-pox epidemic. She has no morbid horror of that subject, because she knows practically how much can be done for the sufferers. If she devote herself to good works, she will be sanguine because so much is being accomplished, instead of dwelling despondently on the hopeless amount there is still to do."

Soon after this, however, I began to hope that a new interest in life was coming to cure her of all morbid moods for ever. I was anxious at first, but she was so quietly happy in the prospect herself, and she continued so well in spite of the drain upon her strength, that I soon took heart again.

"You have got to be very young, Don, since I was so good as to marry you,"

she said to me one day.

She had come in with some flowers for me, and had caught me whistling instead of working.

Sir Shadwell had consented, in his usual kind and generous way, to share the responsibility of this time with me. He came down to us for an occasional "week-end," just to see how she progressed, and his observations, like my own, continued to be satisfactory. It was a crucial test, we knew. If we could carry her safely through this trying time, she would be able to take her proper place with the best of her s.e.x in the battle of life, to fight with them and for them, which was what we both ardently desired to see her do.

There had been never a word of the mental malady since Colquhoun's death.

I had judged it well to let her forget she had ever suffered so if she could, and I had no reason to suspect that she ever thought of it. She had had hours, and even days, of depression since our marriage, but had always been able to account for them satisfactorily; and now, although of course she got down at times, she was less often so than is usually the case under the circ.u.mstances, and was always easily consoled.

She paid me a visit in my study one day. She had a habit of coming occasionally when I was at work, a habit that happily emphasized the difference between my solitary bachelor days and these. She was shy of her caresses as a rule, but would occasionally make my knee her seat, if it happened to suit her convenience, while she filled the flower vases on my table; or she would stand behind me with her hands clasped round my neck, and lean her cheek against my hair. She did so now.

"You love your work, Don, don't you?" she said.

"Yes, sweetheart," I answered; "next to you, it is the great delight of my life."

"But, Don, you find it all-absorbing; don't you?"

"No, not _all_-absorbing, _now_."

"But sufficiently so to be a comfort to you if you ever had any great grief? After the first shock, you would return to your old pursuits, would you not? And, by and by, you would find solace in them?"

I unclasped her hands from my neck, and drew her round to me. There was a new note in her voice that sounded ominous.

"What is the trouble, little woman!" I whispered, when I had her safe in my arms.

"I don't think I could die and leave you, Don, if I thought you would be miserable."

"Well, then, don't allow yourself to entertain any doubt on the subject,"

I answered; "for I should be more than 'miserable.' I should never care for anything in the world again."

"But if I should have to die--"

"There is no need to distress either yourself or me by such an idle supposition, Evadne," I answered. "There is not the slightest occasion for alarm."

"I am not _alarmed_," she said, and then she was silent.

A few days later, I found her sitting on the floor in the library, reading a book she had taken from one of the lower shelves. It was a book of Sir Shadwell Rock's on the heredity of vice. I took it from her gently, remarking as I did so: "I would rather you did not read these things just now, Evadne."

"I suppose you agree with Sir Shadwell Rock," she said.

"Let me help you up," I answered.

"Do you?" she persisted.

"Of course. He is our chief authority," I answered. "But promise me, Evadne, not to look at any of those books again without consulting me. I shall be having you like the medical students who imagine they have symptoms of every disease they study."

"It would mark a strange change in my mind," she answered; "for I used to be able to study any subject of the kind without being affected in that way."

That her mind had changed, alas! or rather, that it had been injured by friction and pressure of the restrictions imposed upon it, was the suspicion which necessitated my present precaution, but I could not say so.

She held out her hands for me to help her to rise. "Why are women kept in the dark about these things?" she said, pointing to the books on heredity.

"Why are we never taught as you are? We are the people to be informed."

"You are quite right," I said. "It is criminal to vithhold knowledge from any woman who has the capacity to acquire it. But there is a time for everything, you know, my sweetheart."

"Now, that poor Colonel Colquhoun," she went on as if I had not spoken.

"He for one should never have been born. With his ancestry, he must have come into the world foredoomed to a life of dissipation and disease. It is awful to think we may any of us become the parents of people who can't be moral without upsetting the whole natural order of the universe. O Don! it is dreadful to know it, but it is sinful to be ignorant of the fact."

"But there is no fear for our children, Evadne," I said. "Ah! that is what I want to know!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands round my arm.

"Come out into the grounds then, sweetheart," I answered, affecting a cheerfulness I was far from feeling; "and I will tell you the whole family history."

I had to go out that evening to see a serious case in consultation with a brother pract.i.tioner. I had ordered the dogcart for ten o'clock, and Evadne came out into the hall with me from the drawing room, where I had been reading to her since dinner, when it was brought round.

"_Must_ you go?" she said listlessly.

"I am afraid I must," I answered; "it is a matter of life and death. But why shouldn't you come too! It will be much better than staying here alone. I ought to have thought of it sooner. Do come! I will send the dogcart back, and have the brougham."

"It would delay you," she said, hesitating.

"Oh, no! Two horses in the brougham will get over the ground faster than one in the dogcart. Come! Let me get you some wraps."

"But when we arrive, my presence will be an inconvenience," she objected.

"In no way," I answered. "It will not be a long business, and you can wait very well in the carriage with a book and a lamp."

She came out and looked at the night, still undecided. The weather was damp and uninviting.

"I don't think I'll go, Don," she said, shivering. "Good-bye and safe home to you!"

As I drove along, I cast about in my own mind for a suitable companion for Evadne, someone who would vary the monotony for her when I had to be out.

She had no ladyloves, as so many women have. Mrs. Orton Beg was at Fraylingay again, and Lady Adeline was the only other friend I knew of who would be congenial just then; but she had multifarious duties of her own to attend to, and it would not have been fair to ask her, especially as she was sure to come if she knew she was wanted, however great the inconvenience to herself. I knew nothing at that time of two other friends of Evadne's, Mrs. Sillinger and Mrs. Malcomson, to whom I afterward learnt that she was much attached. Owing, I think, to the unnatural habit of reticence which had been forced upon her, she had not mentioned them to me, although she continued to correspond with them. It took her some time to realize that every interest of hers was matter of moment to me. A certain colonel and Mrs. Guthrie Brimston had recently settled in the neighbourhood, in order, as they gave out, to be near the Morningquest family, with whom they claimed relationship, on the ground, I believe, that they also were Guthries. Colonel Guthrie Brimston led people to suppose that he had left the service entirely on the duke's account, his disinterested intention being to vary the monotony for the poor old gentleman during his declining years. They had claimed Evadne's acquaintance with effusion, but she had not responded very cordially.

"Let them have a carriage and horses whenever they like, Don," she said, "and give them plenty to eat; but don't otherwise encourage them to come here."

Recollecting which, I now inferred that Mrs. Guthrie Brimston would not answer my present purpose at all.