CHAPTER VIII.

ON THE WATCH.

The travellers came back to Thornleigh Manor in August, when the days were breathless and sultry, and the freshness of the foliage had already begun to fade after an unusually dry summer.  Milly and I had been very happy together, and I think we both looked forward with a vague dread to the coming break in our lives.  She loved her father as dearly as she had ever done, and longed ardently to see him again; but she knew as well as I did that our independence must end with his return.

‘If he were coming back alone, Mary,’ she said—­’if that marriage were all a dream, and he were coming back alone—­how happy I should be!  I know that of is own free will he would never come between me and any wish of mine.  But I don’t know how he would act under his wife’s influence.  You cannot imagine the power she has over him.  And we shall have to begin the old false life over again, she and I—­ disliking and distrusting each other in our hearts—­the daily round of civilities and ceremonies and pretences.  O Mary, you cannot think how I hate it.’

We had seen nothing of Julian Stormont during all the time of our happy solitude; but on the day appointed for Mr. and Mrs. Darrell’s return he came to Thornleigh, looking more careworn than ever.  I pitied him a little, knowing the state of his feelings about Milly, believing indeed that he loved her with a rare intensity, and being inclined to attribute the change in him to his disappointment upon this subject.

Milly told him how ill he was looking, and he said something about hard work and late hours, with a little bitter laugh.

’It doesn’t matter to any one whether I am well or ill, you see, Milly,’ he said.  ’What would any one care if I were to drop over the side of the quay some dark night, on my way from the office to my lodgings, after a hard day’s work, and never be seen alive again?’

’How wicked it is of you to talk like that, Julian!  There are plenty of people who would care—­papa, to begin with.’

’Well, I suppose my uncle William would be rather sorry.  He would lose a good man of business, and he would scarcely like going back to the counting-house, and giving himself up to all the dry details of commerce once more.’

The travellers arrived soon after this.  Mr. Darrell greeted his daughter with much tenderness; but I noticed a kind of languor in Mrs. Darrell’s embrace, very different from her reception of Milly at that first meeting which I had witnessed more than a year before.  It seemed to me that her power over her husband was now supreme, and that she did not trouble herself to keep up any pretence of affection for his only child.

She was dressed to perfection; and that subdued charm which was scarcely beauty, and yet stood in place of it, attracted me to-day as it had done when we first met.  She was a woman who, I could imagine, might be more admired than many handsomer women.  There was a distinction, an originality about the pale delicate face, dark arched brows, and gray eyes—­eyes which were at times very brilliant.