Lady Redmond sat in her “blue nestie;” but this bright winter’s morning she was not alone. A better companion than her white kitten, or her favorite Nero, or even her faithful friend Pierre the St. Bernard, occupied the other velvet rocking-chair.

Outside the snow lay deep and unbroken on the terrace, the little lake was a sheet of blue ice, and the sunshine broke on its crisp surface in sparkles of light.

The avenue itself looked like the glade of some enchanted forest, with snow and icicles pendent from every bough; while above stretched the pure blue winter’s sky, blue-gray, shadowless, tenderly indicative of softness without warmth and color without radiance.

Fay in her dark ruby dress looked almost as brilliant as the morning itself as she sat by the fire talking to her husband’s cousin Erle Huntingdon, who had come down to while away an idle week or two at the old Hall.

He had been there for ten days now, and he and Fay had become very intimate. Erle had been much struck by the singular beauty of Hugh’s child-wife, and he very soon felt almost a brotherly fondness for the gentle little creature, with her soft vivacity and innocent mirth.

It had been a very pleasant ten days to both of them, to Fay especially, who led rather a lonely life.

Erle was such a pleasant companion; he was never too tired or too busy to talk to her. He was so good-natured, so frank and affectionate, so eager to wait on her and do her any little service, that Fay wondered what she would do without him.

Hugh smiled at them indulgently. It always pleased him to see his Wee Wifie happy and amused; but he thought they were like two children together, and secretly marveled at the scraps of conversation that reached his ears. He thought it was a good thing that Fay should have a companion for her rides and drives when he was too busy to go with her himself, and somehow Hugh was always too busy now.

So Fay and Erle scoured the country together, and when Frost came they skated for hours on the little lake.

Sir Hugh stood and watched them once, and they came skimming across the ice to meet him, hand in hand, Fay looking like a bright-eyed bird in her furs.

It was delicious, Fay said, and would not Hugh join them? but her husband shook his head. When other people came to skate too, and Fay poured out tea for her friends in the damask drawing-room, he always kept near her, as in duty bound; but he took no active part in the festivities, and people wondered why Sir Hugh seemed so grave and unlike himself, and then they glanced at Fay’s happy face and seemed mystified.

Erle in his heart was mystified too. He had always liked his cousin and had looked up to him, thinking him a fine fellow; but he noticed a great change in him when he came down to the old Hall to pay his respects to the little bride. He thought Hugh looked moody and ill; that he was often irritable about trifles. He had never noticed that sharp tone in his voice before. His cheerfulness, too, seemed forced, and he had grown strangely unsociable in his habits. Of course he was very busy, with his own estate and his wife’s to look after; but he wondered why Fay did not accompany him when he rode to some distant farm, and why he shut himself up so much in his study. The old Hugh, he remembered, had been the most genial of companions, with a hearty laugh and a fund of humor; but he had never heard him laugh once in all these ten days.

Erle felt vaguely troubled in his kind-hearted way when he watched Hugh and his little wife together. Hugh’s manners did not satisfy Erle’s chivalrous enthusiasm. He thought he treated Fay too much like a child. He was gentle with her, he humored her, and petted her; but he never asked her opinion, or seemed to take pleasure in her society.

“Why on earth has he married her?” he said once to himself as he paced his comfortable room rather indignantly. “He is not a bit in love with her—one sees that in a moment, and yet the poor little thing adores him. It makes one feel miserable to see her gazing at him as though she were worshiping him; and he hardly looks at her, and yet she is the prettiest little creature I have seen for a long time. How Percy would rave about her if he saw her; but I forgot, Percy’s idol is a dark-eyed goddess.”

“All the same,” went on Erle, restlessly; “no man has any right to treat his wife as a child. Hugh never seems to want to know what Fay wishes about anything. He settles everything off-hand, and expects her to be satisfied with what he has done; and she is such a dear, gentle thing that she never objects. It is ‘Yes, dear Hugh,’ or ‘certainly, if you wish it, Hugh,’ from morning to night; somehow that sickens a fellow. I dare say she is a little childish and crude in her ideas; that aunt of hers must be a duffer to have brought her up like a little nun; but she is sensible in her way. Hugh had no idea that she was reading the paper for an hour yesterday, that she might talk to him about that case in which he is so interested, or he would hardly have snubbed her as he did, by telling her she knew nothing about it. She looked so disappointed, poor little thing, there were tears in her eyes; but Hugh never saw them, he never does see if she is a little tired or dull, and I don’t call that treating a wife well.”

Erle was working himself up into quite a virtuous fit of indignation on Fay’s behalf; but presently he became secretly anxious. Before the end of his visit he grew afraid that more was amiss with Hugh than he at first guessed. He had often stayed with him before, and Hugh had visited them at Belgrave House, but he had never noticed any sign of self-indulgence.He thought Hugh was beginning to take more wine than was good for him. He complained of sleeping badly, and had recourse to narcotics. He was reckless of his health too, and worked often far into the night, and when Erle remonstrated with him, he only said he could not sleep, and he might as well occupy himself.

But in reality he never guessed, except in a vague way, the real reason for this change in his cousin. He would have been shocked and startled if he had known the strange morbid fever that was robbing Hugh of all rest.

He was hungering and thirsting for the sight of a face that he said to himself he had better never look on again; his very nearness to Margaret kept him restless, and made his life intolerable.

What a fool he had been to marry, he told himself; to let that child bind him down to this sort of life. If he could only break away for a time—if he could travel and try what change would do for him; but this quiet existence was maddening.

He was trying his fine constitution terribly, and he knew it. He would tire himself out riding over his estate, and then sit up over his letters and accounts half the night, till his brain seemed stupefied, and yet he had no wish for sleep.

Erle told him he looked haggard and ill, but Sir Hugh only laughed at him; there was nothing the matter, he said, carelessly; he was tough, like all the Redmonds, and he had never been ill in his life. If he only slept better he should be all right, but want of sleep plays the very deuce with a man, and so on.

“If I were you, I should not touch spirits or narcotics,” observed Erle, quietly; “your nerves are a little out of order. You should take things more easily, and not sit up so late; one can form the habit of sleep.” But Hugh only scoffed at the notion of nerves, and during his long visit Erle saw little improvement.

He was thankful, and yet puzzled, to see that Fay did not notice the sad change in her husband. Now and then she would say to him rather timidly, as though she feared a rebuff, “You are not quite well to-day, are you, Hugh? Your hand is so hot and dry; do stay quietly with me this morning, and I will read you to sleep;” but Hugh only laughed at her anxious face.“Run away, my pet, for I am busy,” he would answer. “If you want a companion, here is this idle fellow, Erle, who never did a stroke of work in his life, I believe;” and Fay would go away reluctantly.

Erle had already grown very confidential with Fay. In her gentle way she took him to task for his desultory life. Erle owned his faults very frankly; it was quite true, he said, that he had not distinguished himself at the university, and had been chiefly known there as a boating man; but he had been extremely popular in his college. “It is all very well,” he grumbled, as he sat in Fay’s boudoir that morning, talking to her in his usual idle fashion. “What is a fellow to do with his life; perhaps you can tell me that? Uncle ought to have let me make the grand tour, and then I could have enlarged my mind. Ah, yes! every fellow wants change,” as Fay smiled at this; “what does a little salmon-fishing in Norway signify; or a month at the Norfolk Broads?—that is all I had last year. Uncle talks of the Engadine and the Austrian Tyrol next summer, but he travels en grand seigneur, and that is such a bore.”

Erle was perfectly willing to describe his life at Belgrave House to Fay. She was a shrewd little person in her way, and her quaint remarks were very refreshing. He even thought that he would confide in her after a fashion, and hint at a certain difficulty and complication that had come into his life; he was rather desirous of knowing her opinion; but he began in such a roundabout fashion that Fay was quite perplexed. She understood at last that he was talking about two girls, who both seemed to influence him, and for whom he had special liking; but for a long time she could not find out which was the chief favorite.

She grew impatient at last in her pretty, imperious way, and put a stop to his unsatisfactory rambling style of talk, by asking him a few downright questions.

“You are terribly vague,” she said, wrinkling her forehead in a wise way, and folding her little white hands on her lap; they looked absurdly dimpled and babyish in spite of the brilliant diamond and emerald rings that loaded them. “How is a person to understand all that rigmarole? Perhaps I am stupid, but you talk so fast, you silly boy, and now tell me exactly what this Miss Selby is like; I think you said her name was Evelyn.”“Oh! I am not good at descriptions,” returned Erle, pulling Nero’s long glossy ears. “She is an awfully jolly girl, plenty of go in her, lights up well of an evening, and knows exactly what to say to a fellow—keeps him alive, you know; the sort of girl who will dance like a bird half the night, and get up early the next morning and have an hour’s canter in the park before breakfast.”

“Ah,” in a mystified tone, “she seems a very active young person; but you have not made me see her; is she tall or short, Erle?”

“Well, she is not the tall, scraggy sort, neither is she a diminutive creature, like your ladyship. Miss Selby is medium height, and has a good figure.”

“Yes, and her face?” demanded Fay, with a baby frown; “you are very bad at description, Erle, very bad indeed.”

“Well, she is not dark,” returned Erle, desperately, “not a brunette, I mean; and she is not fair, like the other one, she has brown hair—yes, I am sure it is brown—and good features. Well, I suppose people call her exceedingly handsome, and she dresses well, and holds herself well, and is altogether a pleasant sort of young woman.”

Fay’s lips curled disdainfully. “I do not think I admire your description much, sir. Plenty of go in her; well, who cares for that? and lights up well of an evening, as though she were a ball-room decoration; I think she seems a frivolous sort of creature.”

“Oh, no,” replied Erle, eagerly, for this would not do at all. Fay’s little satire fell very short of the truth. “You have not hit it off exactly; Lady Maltravers is frivolous, if you like—a mild edition of the renowned Mrs. Skewton, thinks of nothing but diamonds, and settlements, and all the vanities for which your worldly woman sells her soul. It is a great wonder that, with such an example before her eyes, Miss Selby is not as bad herself; but she is a wonderfully sensible girl, and never talks that sort of nonsense; why, she goes to early service, and looks after some poor people: not that she ever mentions these facts, for she is not a goody-goody sort at all.”

“Oh, no, she has too much go in her,” returned Fay, calmly. “I was quite right when I said that she was an active young person; and now about the other one, Erle?”

“Well,” Erle began again, but this time he utterly broke down; for how was he to describe this girl with her beautiful frank mouth, and her soft smiling eyes; he had never found out their color at all; would Fay understand if he told her of the sprightliness and sweetness that, in his opinion, made Fern so peculiarly attractive to him. But, to his astonishment, Fay grasped the whole situation in a moment.

“Oh, you need not tell me, you poor boy,” she said, with a knowing nod of her head; “so it is not the young lady with the go in her, though she does dance like a bird; it is this other one with the fair hair and the pretty smile.”

“How do you know, you little witch?” returned Erle, staring at her with an honest boyish blush on his face; “do you know that Miss Trafford is poor; that she makes her own gowns, and teaches the vicar’s little girls; and that Miss Selby, of whom you speak so rudely, is niece to a countess?”

“Well, what of that?” responded Fay, scornfully; “if your lady-love be poor, Erle, you are rich enough for both;” but he interrupted her with an alarmed air.

“That is the worst of chattering to a woman,” he said, in a lofty way. “If you give them an inch, they take an ell; who said I was in love with either of them? Do you know my uncle has spoken to me about Miss Selby: he says she is a fine girl and after his own heart; and he has given me a strong hint that an engagement with her will be greatly for my interest.” But Fay turned a deaf ear to all this.

“And the fair-haired girl with the pretty smile; if you marry her, Erle?”

“In that case, my uncle would refuse to have anything more to do with me. No doubt he would disinherit me as he did his own daughter; and Percy would be his heir. Ah, it is all very well talking, Fay,” and here Erle looked at her rather gloomily. “I have never learned to work, and I should make a pretty mess of my life; it would be poor Mrs. Trafford’s experience over again.” And he shook his head when Fay suggested that Hugh should let him have one of his farms. He knew nothing about farming; a little Latin and Greek, a smattering of French and German, were his chief acquirements. “I should have to turn boatman, or starve. No, no, Fay; I must not swamp my own prospects for a mere sentimental idea; and after all, Miss Selby is very nice.”Fay was very angry with him when he said this, for she had taken a curious fancy to this Fern Trafford, but Erle would not listen to her; he got up and shook himself, and walked to the window, and then very gravely proposed a game of snow-balling in the avenue.

Fay thought he was serious, and expressed herself much shocked at the idea. Hugh would not like it, she was sure; one of the gardeners might see them. As it was, Hugh had told her that he was afraid the servants were not sufficiently in awe of her ever since they saw her playing hide and seek in the hall with Nero.

She confessed that she was very fond of it though, and had snow-balled Nero last year in the Daintree garden, and Aunt Griselda had not been shocked at all.

“Don’t you sometimes wish you were back at Daintree?” asked Erle, turning round from the window and contemplating the pretty flushed face rather curiously.

“Oh, no,” she returned, quickly; “how can you ask me such a question, Erle. I could not imagine life without Hugh. Does it not seem strange?” she continued, seriously; “I have only been married about five months, and yet I find it impossible to imagine myself back at the cottage without Hugh.”

“Do you know,” observed Erle, carelessly, as he sauntered back to the fire-place, “that I have been here ten days, and must begin to think of my return? If there be one thing I hate, it is to outstay my welcome. I should be afraid of boring you both if I stayed much longer. Well, what now?” breaking off in some surprise.

“Ah, Erle!” exclaimed Fay, sorrowfully, the smiles and the dimples disappearing in a moment, “you are surely not going away yet. What shall I do without you?” continued the poor child. “Who will ride and drive and skate with me when you are gone?”

“Why, your husband, to be sure,” returned Erle, lightly; but he was watching her as he spoke. “You have not forgotten your husband, you naughty woman.”

Fay never knew why a sudden sharp pang shot through her at Erle’s careless remark.

It had never occurred to her simple mind to question her husband’s right to keep so entirely aloof from her, and to give her such fragments of his time. But now, as Erle spoke, a dim unconscious feeling came over her that another was usurping his rightful place; that it was her husband who ought to be riding and driving with her, and not his young cousin, but in her wifely loyalty she stifled the feeling, and spoke firmly, though with crimsoned cheeks, like the brave little woman she really was.

“Why, you extremely foolish boy,” she said, “don’t you know that Hugh has something better to do with his time than to waste it on me? You see,” she continued, with much dignity, “he has my estate to look after as well as his own, and it is a large one, and he has no reliable bailiff.”

“Dear, dear,” replied Erle, with much solemnity.

“And he has to ride over to Pierrepoint on magisterial business ever so often,” and here Fay stammered slightly over the long word, but recovered herself in an instant; “and he visits the infirmary, and looks after any of his people who are ill there.”

Here Erle again said, “Dear, dear;” but his provoking smile died away after a glance at her face.

“And,” continued Fay, her mouth quivering a little, “you must see how proud I am of being his wife, and must not think that I am sorry that he is able to spend so little of his time with me, for I would not have him neglect his duty for the world; no, no, he is far too good and noble and useful to waste his time on me;” and Fay’s face wore such a sweet tremulous smile as she spoke, that Erle whispered under his breath, “You are a darling,” and went out silently, and perhaps for the first time in his life forgot to hum as he put on his fur-lined coat.

And Fay, standing alone in her little room, whispered softly, “No, no, my bonny Hugh, your Wee Wifie loves you far too well to keep you all to herself;” but during the remainder of the day she was a little quieter than usual; and Erle missed the gentle fun that rippled into such a stream of girlish talk. He had no idea that every now and then his words came back to her with a little throb of pain, “You have your husband, Fay.”

Yes, she had her husband; but would the time ever come to the girl-wife when she should know she had him, but that she could not hold him, when she should learn that he had given her everything but his heart, and cry out against him in that bitter waking that all was worthless to her but that?