The reply was not such as completes the blessedness of pure submission.  Adela averted her eyes.  Another woman would perchance have sought to assure herself that she was right in crediting him with private benevolence to the family he was compelled to visit so severely.  Such a question Adela could not ask.  It would have been to betray doubt; she imagined a replying glance which would shame her.  To love, to honour, to obey:—­many times daily she repeated to herself that threefold vow, and hitherto the first article had most occupied her striving heart.  But she must not neglect the second; perhaps it came first in natural order.

At the gate Richard nodded to her kindly.

‘Good-bye.  Be a good girl.’

What was it that caused a painful flutter at her heart as he spoke so?  She did not answer, but watched him for a few moments as he walked away.

Did he love her?  The question which she had not asked herself for a long time came of that heart-tremor.  She had been living so unnatural a life for a newly wedded woman, a life in which the intellect and the moral faculties held morbid predominance.  ’Be a good girl.’  How was it that the simple phrase touched her to emotion quite different in kind from any thing she had known since her marriage, more deeply than any enthusiasm, as with a comfort more sacred than any she had known in prayer?  As she turned to go back to the house a dizziness affected her eyes; she had to stand still for a moment.  Involuntarily she clasped her hands upon her bosom and looked away into the blue summer sky.  Did he love her?  She had never asked him that, and all at once she felt a longing to hasten after him and utter the question.  Would he know what she meant?

Was it the instantaneous reward for having conscientiously striven to honour him?  That there should be love on his side had not hitherto seemed of so much importance; probably she had taken it for granted; she had been so preoccupied with her own duties.  Yet now it had all at once become of moment that she should know.  ’Be a good girl.’  She repeated the words over and over again, and made much of them.  Perhaps she had given him no opportunity, no encouragement, to say all he felt; she knew him to be reserved in many things.

As she entered the house the dizziness again troubled her.  But it passed as before.

Mr. Keene, who had stayed over-night, was waiting to take leave of her; the trap which would carry him to Agworth station had just driven up.  Adela surprised the poor journalist by the warmth with which she shook his hand, and the kindness of her farewell.  She was not deceived as to the motive of his visit, and just now she allowed herself to feel sympathy for him, though in truth she did not like the man.