“Would it have been easy to have done it otherwise?” asked Edward.

“Perfectly,” replied the Captain.  “She had only to break away a corner of the rock, which is now but an unsightly object, made up as it is of little pieces, and she would at once have a sweep for her walk and stone in abundance for the rough masonry work, to widen it in the bad places, and make it smooth.  But this I tell you in strictest confidence.  Her it would only confuse and annoy.  What is done must remain as it is.  If any more money and labor is to be spent there, there is abundance to do above the summer-house on the hill, which we can settle our own way.”

If the two friends found in their occupation abundance of present employment, there was no lack either of entertaining reminiscences of early times, in which Charlotte took her part as well.  They determined, moreover, that as soon as their immediate labors were finished, they would go to work upon the journal, and in this way, too, reproduce the past.

For the rest, when Edward and Charlotte were alone, there were fewer matters of private interest between them than formerly.  This was especially the case since the fault-finding about the grounds, which Edward thought so just, and which he felt to the quick.  He held his tongue about what the Captain had said for a long time; but at last, when he saw his wife again preparing to go to work above the summer-house, with her paths and steps, he could not contain himself any longer, but, after a few circumlocutions, came out with his new views.

Charlotte was thoroughly disturbed.  She was sensible enough to perceive at once that they were right, but there was the difficulty with what was already done—­and what was made was made.  She had liked it; even what was wrong had become dear to her in its details.  She fought against her convictions; she defended her little creations; she railed at men who were forever going to the broad and the great.  They could not let a pastime, they could not let an amusement alone, she said, but they must go and make a work out of it, never thinking of the expense which their larger plans involved.  She was provoked, annoyed, and angry.  Her old plans she could not give up, the new she would not quite throw from her; but, divided as she was, for the present she put a stop to the work, and gave herself time to think the thing over, and let it ripen by itself.

At the same time that she lost this source of active amusement, the others were more and more together over their own business.  They took to occupying themselves, moreover, with the flower-garden and the hot-houses; and as they filled up the intervals with the ordinary gentlemen’s amusements, hunting, riding, buying, selling, breaking horses, and such matters, she was every day left more and more to herself.  She devoted herself more assiduously than ever to her correspondence on account of the Captain; and yet she had many lonely hours; so that the information which she now received from the school became of more agreeable interest.