For some time she was very happy; and the remote farm-house, with its old-fashioned gardens and fair stretch of meadow-land beyond them, where all shade and beauty had not yet been sacrificed to the interests of agriculture, seemed to her in those halcyon days a kind of earthly paradise.  She endured her husband’s occasional absence from this rural home with perfect patience.  These absences were rare and brief at first, but afterwards grew longer and more frequent.  Nor did she ever sigh for any brighter or gayer life than this which they led together at the Grange.  In him were the beginning and end of her hopes and dreams; and so long as he was pleased and contented, she was completely happy.  It was only when a change came in him—­very slight at first, but still obvious to his wife’s tender watchful eyes—­that her own happiness was clouded.  That change told her that whatever he might be to her, she was no longer all the world to him.  He loved her still, no doubt; but the bright holiday-time of his love was over, and his wife’s presence had no longer the power to charm away every dreary thought.  He was a man in whose disposition there was a lurking vein of melancholy—­a kind of chronic discontent very common to men of whom it has been said that they might do great things in the world, and who have succeeded in doing nothing.

It is not to be supposed that Mr. Holbrook intended to keep his wife shut away from the world in a lonely farm-house all her life.  The place suited him very well for the present; the apartments at the Grange, and the services of Mr. Carley and his dependents, had been put at his disposal by the owner of the estate, together with all farm and garden produce.  Existence here therefore cost him very little; his chief expenses were in gifts to the bailiff and his underlings, which he bestowed with a liberal hand.  His plans for the future were as yet altogether vague and unsettled.  He had thoughts of emigration, of beginning life afresh in a new country—­anything to escape from the perplexities that surrounded him here; and he had his reasons for keeping his wife secluded.  Nor did his conscience disturb him much—­he was a man who had his conscience in very good training—­as to the unfairness of this proceeding.  Marian was happy, he told himself; and when time came for some change in the manner of her existence, he doubted if the change would be for the better.

So the days and weeks and months had passed away, bringing little variety with them, and none of what the world calls pleasure.  Marian read and worked and rambled in the country lanes and meadows with Ellen Carley, and visited the poor people now and then, as she had been in the habit of doing at Lidford.  She had not very much to give them, but gave all she could; and she had a gentle sympathetic manner, which made her welcome amongst them, most of all where there were children, for whom she had always a special attraction.  The little ones clung to her and trusted her, looking up at her lovely face with spontaneous affection.