field Manor; but her shyness, which had painfully increased since her marriage, repelled all advances towards intimacy, and with men in particular. She generally passed for a beautiful piece of workmanship, in which was wanting the spring to communicate motion. So she sat at the head of her husband's table, drove out in his carriages, received his visitors, was the mother of his son and heir, and the moving ornament of his house. No one saw the tear that started to her eye when she was alone and looked back upon her happy childish life. Had she shown any signs of the feelings she controlled, her task of endurance would have been more difficult; but though she did indeed bitterly lament the want of forethought and due consideration which had in her own and her parent's case led to her marriage, she had never, either in word or deed, rebelled against her husband's authority or will. It was well that she thus habitually exercised self-command, or she would have found many whose sympathy would not have tended to diminish the hardness of her lot. For from pitying sympathy it is but too easy to progress, step by step, towards an interest unsanctioned in the annals of wedded life. Hitherto Mary Graham had suffered alone and unconsoled; but time was working onward, and a change was at hand, in which the strongest moral courage would be required. CHAPTER VII. "Vous savez un secret que, tout prêt à s'ouvrir, Mon cœur a mille fois voulu vous découvrir. Déjà plein d'un amour dès l'enfance formé, BAJAZET. We must return to Graham, who, alone in his library, was yet encompassed, as we have seen, with a host of memories, which exercised awful power over the passing moment. He rang the bell. "Where is Mrs. Graham?" "She is with Master Graham, sir; he has been very unwell all yesterday and last night." A chord was touched in Graham's stern heart; but, before his servants, he always controlled his feelings. "Tell your mistress I am returned, and wish to speak to her." In a few moments Mrs. Graham entered, her face flushed with the care of watching over her sick child, and with evidence in her gentle countenance of many an anxious moment having passed by since she was the light-hearted, animated, beautiful Mary Harcourt. "I did not know you were returned," she said, timidly, as her husband bestowed on her fair brow the cold kiss with which he usually greeted her after a temporary ab sence. "Is the child ill?" he said hurriedly. Yes, he is indeed. I sat up with him all night; but I am thankful that he is better to-day." Graham did not apparently notice her wearied, anxious look, and nervous manner. She was not very strong naturally, and, feeling an unwonted lowness of spirits, she walked quietly to the window, when, not withstanding all her efforts to repress emotion, the tears stole to her eyes, and a low sob caught Graham's impatient ear. 11 "What womanly weakness!" he muttered half aloud. "You are a child still, Mrs., Graham-a perfect child! What are those tears and sobs for? Eustace is not seriously ill?" he continued, in a tone of some alarm. Mary dried her eyes. A word a few kind words would have dried the source of those tears for ever, but they were wanting; and, folding herself in the reserve and pride which, alas! had of late come to her assistance, she sat down to occupy herself, apparently, in a piece of needle-work-a truly feminine resource under most untoward circumstances. Graham was in a mood to find fault with everything; sometimes he was merely cold, apathetic, totally indifferent to what was passing around him. "Well, can't you tell me what has been the matter with Eustace; or do you suppose I have no more feeling than that bit of muslin, which is your eternal companion?" |