“Rather see you than the money, Mr. Richard,” said Tom.

“And you will always watch and see no harm comes to her, Tom.”

“Mrs. Richard, sir?” Tom stared.  “God bless me, Mr. Richard”—­

“No questions.  You’ll do what I say.”

“Ay, sir; that I will.  Did’n Isle o’ Wight.”

The very name of the Island shocked Richard’s blood; and he had to walk up and down before he could knock at Lucy’s door.  That infamous conspiracy to which he owed his degradation and misery scarce left him the feelings of a man when he thought of it.

The soft beloved voice responded to his knock.  He opened the door, and stood before her.  Lucy was half-way toward him.  In the moment that passed ere she was in his arms, he had time to observe the change in her.  He had left her a girl:  he beheld a woman—­a blooming woman:  for pale at first, no sooner did she see him than the colour was rich and deep on her face and neck and bosom half shown through the loose dressing-robe, and the sense of her exceeding beauty made his heart thump and his eyes swim.

“My darling!” each cried, and they clung together, and her mouth was fastened on his.

They spoke no more.  His soul was drowned in her kiss.  Supporting her, whose strength was gone, he, almost as weak as she, hung over her, and clasped her closer, closer, till they were as one body, and in the oblivion her lips put upon him he was free to the bliss of her embrace.  Heaven granted him that.  He placed her in a chair and knelt at her feet with both arms around her.  Her bosom heaved; her eyes never quitted him:  their light as the light on a rolling wave.  This young creature, commonly so frank and straightforward, was broken with bashfulness in her husband’s arms—­womanly bashfulness on the torrent of womanly love; tenfold more seductive than the bashfulness of girlhood.  Terrible tenfold the loss of her seemed now, as distantly—­far on the horizon of memory—­the fatal truth returned to him.

Lose her? lose this?  He looked up as if to ask God to confirm it.

The same sweet blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen in the dying glories of evening; on him they dwelt, shifting, and fluttering, and glittering, but constant:  the light of them as the light on a rolling wave.

And true to him! true, good, glorious, as the angels of heaven!  And his she was! a woman—­his wife!  The temptation to take her, and be dumb, was all powerful:  the wish to die against her bosom so strong as to be the prayer of his vital forces.  Again he strained her to him, but this time it was as a robber grasps priceless treasure—­with exultation and defiance.  One instant of this.  Lucy, whose pure tenderness had now surmounted the first wild passion of their meeting, bent back her head from her surrendered body, and said almost voicelessly, her underlids wistfully quivering:  “Come and see him—­baby;” and then in great hope of the happiness she was going to give her husband, and share with him, and in tremour and doubt of what his feelings would be, she blushed, and her brows worked:  she tried to throw off the strangeness of a year of separation, misunderstanding, and uncertainty.