“Exactly, though I see it more from Raymond’s point of view.  So you are going to the dinner?”

“Oh yes.  Happily my Rector has nothing to say against that, and I am sure he owes me something for keeping me out of the bazaar.  In fact, having avoided the trouble, I couldn’t take the pleasure! and he must set that against the races.”

“My dear, though I am not set against races like Julius, I think, considering his strong feelings on the subject—­”

“My dear Mrs. Poynsett, it would be very bad for Julius to give in to his fancies.  The next thing would be to set baby up in a little hood and veil like a nun!”

Rosamond’s winsome nonsense could not but gain a smile.  No doubt she was a pleasant daughter-in-law, though, for substantial care, Anne was the strength and reliance.  Even Anne was much engrossed by preparations for the bazaar.  It had been a great perplexity to her that the one thing she thought not worldly should be condemned by Julius, and he had not tried to prevent her from assisting Cecil, thinking, as he had told Eleonora, that the question of right and wrong was not so trenchant as to divide households.

The banquet and inauguration went off fairly well.  There was nothing in it worth recording, except that Rosamond pronounced that Raymond only wanted a particle of Irish fluency to be a perfect speaker; but every one was observing how ill and depressed he looked.  Even Cecil began to see it herself, and to ask Lady Tyrrell with some anxiety whether she thought him altered.

“Men always look worn after a Session,” said Lady Tyrrell.

“If this really makes him unhappy!”

“My dear Cecil, that’s the very proof of the necessity.  If it makes him unhappy to go five miles away with his wife, it ought not.  You should wean him from such dependence.”

Cecil had tears in her eyes as she said, “I don’t know!  When I hear him sighing in his sleep, I long to give it up and tell him I will try to be happy here.”

“My dear child, don’t be weak.  If you give way now, you will rue it all your life.”

“If I could have taken to his mother, I think he would have cared more for me.”

“No.  The moment her jealousy was excited she would have resumed him, and you would have been the more shut out in the cold.  A little firmness now, and the fresh start is before you.”

Cecil sighed, feeling that she was paying a heavy price for that fresh start, but her hands were too full for much thought.  Guests came to dinner, Mrs. Poynsett kept more to her own room, and Raymond exerted himself to talk, so that the blank of the evenings was less apparent.  The days were spent at the town-hall, where the stalls were raised early enough for all the ladies, their maids and footmen, to buzz about them all day, decking them out.