The well were as susceptible to its influence as the sick.  Once, half a dozen men and twice as many boys were seen engaged in recovering her veil out of a pond into which the wind had blown it; and when it was handed to her by a shy youth on the end of a twenty-foot pole, all felt repaid for their labors by the childlike burst of laughter with which she received it.  Now and then, however, shadows fell across this sunshine.  In those dark moments she frequently reverted to the unhappy couple of whom she had told Leighton when he first spoke to her of marriage.  She was possessed to describe the man—­his dull, filmy, unsympathetic black eyes, his methodical life and hard rationality, his want of sentiment and tenderness.

“Why do you talk of that person so much?” Leighton implored.  “You seem to be charging me with his cruelty.  I am not like him.”

The tears filled her eyes as she started toward him, saying, “No, you are not like him.  Even if you should become like him, I couldn’t reproach you.  I should merely die.”

“But you know him so well?” he added, inquiringly.  “You seem to fear him.  Has he any power over you?”

For a moment she was so sombre that he half feared lest her mind was unstrung on this one subject.

“No,” she at last said.  “His power is gone—­nearly gone.  Oh, if I could only forget!”

After another pause, during which she seemed to be nerving herself to a confession, she threw herself into her husband’s arms and whispered, “He is my—­uncle.”

He was puzzled by the contrast between the violence of her emotion and the unimportance of this avowal; but as he at least saw that the subject was painful to her, and as he was all confidence and gentleness, he put no more inquiries.

“Forget it all,” he murmured, caressing her; and with a deep sigh, the sigh of tired childhood, she answered, “Yes.”

The long summer days, laden with happiness for these two, sailed onward to their sunset havens.  After a time, as August drew near its perfumed death, Alice began to speak of a journey which she should soon be obliged to make to New York.  She must go, she said to Leighton—­it was a matter of property, of business:  she would tell him all about it some day.  But she would return soon; that is, she would return as soon as possible:  she would let him know how soon by letter.

When he proposed to accompany her she would not hear of it.  To merely go on with her, she represented, would be a useless expense, and to stay as long as she might need to stay would injure his practice.  In these days her gayety seemed forced, and more than once he found her weeping; yet so innocent was he, so simple in his views of life, so candid in soul, that he suspected no hidden evil:  he attributed her agitation entirely to grief at the prospect of separation.

His own annoyance in view of the journey centred in the fact that his wife would be absent from him, and that he could not incessantly surround her with his care.  Whether she would be happy, whether she would be treated with consideration, whether she would be safe from accidents and alarms, whether her delicate health would not suffer, were the questions which troubled him.  He had the masculine instinct of protection:  he was as virile as he was gentle and affectionate.