and love of the noble woman who could thus think and speak.  Adela—­and who will not be thankful for it?—­was, before all things, feminine; her true enthusiasms were personal.  It was a necessity of her nature to love a human being, this or that one, not a crowd.  She had been starving, killing the self which was her value.  This home on the Devon coast received her like an earthly paradise; looking back on New Wanley, she saw it murky and lurid; it was hard to believe that the sun ever shone there.  But for the most part, she tried to keep it altogether from her mind, tried to dissociate her husband from his public tasks, and to remember him as the man with whom her life was irrevocably bound up.  When delight in Stella’s poetry was followed by fear, she strengthened herself by thought of the child she bore beneath her heart; for that child’s sake she would accept the beautiful things offered to her, some day to bring them, as rich gifts to the young life.  Her own lot was fixed; she might not muse upon it, she durst not consider it too deeply.  There were things in the past which she had determined, if by any means it were possible, utterly to forget.  For the future, there was her child.

Mutimer came to Exmouth when she had been there three weeks, and he stayed four days.  Mrs. Boscobel had an opportunity of making his acquaintance.

‘Who contrived that marriage?’ she asked of Mr. Westlake subsequently.  ‘Our lady mother, presumably.’

‘I have no reason to think it was not well done,’ replied Mr. Westlake with reserve.

‘Most skilfully done, no doubt,’ rejoined the lady.

But at the end of the year, the Westlakes returned to London, the Boscobels shortly after.  Mrs. Waltham and her daughter had made no other close connections, and Adela’s health alone allowed of her leaving the house for a short drive on sunny days.  At the end of February the child was born prematurely; it entered the world only to leave it again.  For a week they believed that Adela would die.  Scarcely was she pronounced out of danger by the end of March.  But after that she recovered strength.

May saw her at Wanley once more.  She had become impatient to return.  The Parliamentary elections were very near at hand, and Mutimer almost lived in Belwick; it seemed to Adela that duty required her to be near him, as well as to supply his absence from New Wanley as much as was possible.  She was still only the ghost of her former self, but disease no longer threatened her, and activity alone could completely restore her health.  She was anxious to recommence her studies, to resume her readings to the children; and she desired to see Mr. Wyvern.  She understood by this time why he had chosen Andersen’s Tales for her readings; of many other things which he had said, causing her doubt, the meaning was now clear enough to her.  She had so much to talk of with the vicar, so many questions to put to him, not a few of a kind that would—­she thought—­surprise and trouble him.  None the less, they must be asked and answered.  Part of her desire to see him again was merely the result of her longing for the society of well-read and thoughtful people.  She knew that he would appear to her in a different light from formerly; she would be far better able to understand him.