It seemed to Dorothy strange that she did not fall ill.  For the first few days she was restless and miserable as human being could be.  She had but one change of mood:  either she would talk feverously, or sit in the gloomiest silence, now and then varied with a fit of abandoned weeping.  Every time Dorothy came from Glaston, she would overwhelm her with questions—­which at first Dorothy could easily meet, for she spoke absolute fact when she said she knew nothing concerning her husband.  When at length the cause of his absence was understood, she told her he was with his friend, Dr. May, at Broughill.  Knowing the universal belief that she had committed suicide, nothing could seem more natural.  But when, day after day, she heard the same thing for weeks, she began to fear he would never be able to resume his practice, at least at Glaston, and wept bitterly at the thought of the evil she had brought upon him who had given her life, and love to boot.  For her heart was a genuine one, and dwelt far more on the wrong her too eager love had done him, than on the hardness with which he had resented it.  Nay, she admired him for the fierceness of his resentment, witnessing, in her eyes, to the purity of the man whom his neighbors regarded as wicked.

After the first day, she paid even less heed to any thing of a religious kind with which Dorothy, in the strength of her own desire after a perfect stay, sought to rouse or console her.  When Dorothy ventured on such ground, which grew more and more seldom, she would sit listless, heedless, with a far-away look.  Sometimes when Dorothy fancied she had been listening a little, her next words would show that her thoughts had been only with her husband.  When the subsiding of the deluge of her agony, allowed words to carry meaning to her, any hint at supernal consolation made her angry, and she rejected every thing Dorothy said, almost with indignation.  To seem even to accept such comfort, she would have regarded as traitorous to her husband.  Not the devotion of the friend who gave up to her all of her life she could call her own, sufficed to make her listen even with a poor patience.  So absorbed was she in her trouble, that she had no feeling of what poor Dorothy had done for her.  How can I blame her, poor lady!  If existence was not a thing to be enjoyed, as for her it certainly was not at present, how was she to be thankful for what seemed its preservation?  There was much latent love to Dorothy in her heart; I may go further and say there was much latent love to God in her heart, only the latter was very latent as yet.  When her heart was a little freer from grief and the agony of loss, she would love Dorothy; but God must wait with his own patience—­wait long for the child of His love to learn that her very sorrow came of His dearest affection.  Who wants such affection as that? says the unloving.  No one, I answer; but every one who comes to know it, glorifies it as the only love that ever could satisfy his being.