During the spring and summer, Mrs. Sherwin appeared to grow feebler and feebler, from continued ill-health.  Occasionally, her words and actions—­especially in her intercourse with me—­suggested fears that her mind was beginning to give way, as well as her body.  For instance, on one occasion, when Margaret had left the room for a minute or two, she suddenly hurried up to me, whispering with eager looks and anxious tones:—­“Watch over your wife—­mind you watch over her, and keep all bad people from her! I’ve tried to do it—­mind you do it, too!” I asked immediately for an explanation of this extraordinary injunction; but she only answered by muttering something about a mother’s anxieties, and then returned hastily to her place.  It was impossible to induce her to be more explicit, try how I might.

Margaret once or twice occasioned me much perplexity and distress, by certain inconsistencies and variations in her manner, which began to appear shortly after my return to North Villa from the country.  At one time, she would become, on a sudden, strangely sullen and silent—­at another, irritable and capricious.  Then, again, she would abruptly change to the most affectionate warmth of speech and demeanour, anxiously anticipating every wish I could form, eagerly showing her gratitude for the slightest attentions I paid her.  These unaccountable alterations of manner vexed and irritated me indescribably.  I loved Margaret too well to be able to look philosophically on the imperfections of her character; I knew of no cause given by me for the frequent changes in her conduct, and, if they only proceeded from coquetry, then coquetry, as I once told her, was the last female accomplishment that could charm me in any woman whom I really loved.  However, these causes of annoyance and regret—­her caprices, and my remonstrances—­all passed happily away, as the term of my engagement with Mr. Sherwin approached its end, Margaret’s better and lovelier manner returned.  Occasionally, she might betray some symptoms of confusion, some evidences of unusual thoughtfulness—­but I remembered how near was the day of the emancipation of our love, and looked on her embarrassment as a fresh charm, a new ornament to the beauty of my maiden wife.

Mr. Mannion continued—­as far as attention to my interests went—­to be the same ready and reliable friend as ever; but he was, in some other respects, an altered man.  The illness of which he had complained months back, when I returned to London, seemed to have increased.  His face was still the same impenetrable face which had so powerfully impressed me when I first saw him, but his manner, hitherto so quiet and self-possessed, had now grown abrupt and variable.  Sometimes, when he joined us in the drawing-room at North Villa, he would suddenly stop before we had exchanged more than three or four words, murmur something, in a voice unlike his usual voice, about an attack of spasm and giddiness, and