More vivid than were the experiences themselves of that journey are the memories of them.  We went to windswept, Sabbath-keeping Edinburgh, to high Stirling and dark Holyrood, and to Abbotsford.  It was through Sir Walter’s eyes we beheld Melrose bathed in autumn light, by his aid repeopled it with forgotten monks eating their fast-day kale.

And as we sat reading and dreaming in the still, sunny corners I forgot, that struggle for power in which I had been so furiously engaged since leaving Cambridge.  Legislatures, politicians and capitalists receded into a dim background; and the gift I had possessed, in youth, of living in a realm of fancy showed astonishing signs of revival.

“Why, Hugh,” Maude exclaimed, “you ought to have been a writer!”

“You’ve only just begun to fathom my talents,” I replied laughingly.  “Did you think you’d married just a dry old lawyer?”

“I believe you capable of anything,” she said....

I grew more and more to depend on her for little things.

She was a born housewife.  It was pleasant to have her do all the packing, while I read or sauntered in the queer streets about the inns.  And she took complete charge of my wardrobe.

She had a talent for drawing, and as we went southward through England she made sketches of the various houses that took our fancy—­suggestions for future home-building; we spent hours in the evenings in the inn sitting-rooms incorporating new features into our residence, continually modifying our plans.  Now it was a Tudor house that carried us away, now a Jacobean, and again an early Georgian with enfolding wings and a wrought-iron grill.  A stage of bewilderment succeeded.

Maude, I knew, loved the cottages best.  She said they were more “homelike.”  But she yielded to my liking for grandeur.

“My, I should feel lost in a palace like that!” she cried, as we gazed at the Marquis of So-and-So’s country-seat.

“Well, of course we should have to modify it,” I admitted.  “Perhaps—­perhaps our family will be larger.”

She put her hand on my lips, and blushed a fiery red....

We examined, with other tourists, at a shilling apiece historic mansions with endless drawing-rooms, halls, libraries, galleries filled with family portraits; elaborate, formal bedrooms where famous sovereigns had slept, all roped off and carpeted with canvas strips to protect the floors.  Through mullioned windows we caught glimpses of gardens and geometrical parterres, lakes, fountains, statuary, fantastic topiary and distant stretches of park.  Maude sighed with admiration, but did not covet.  She had me.  But I was often uncomfortable, resenting the vulgar, gaping tourists with whom we were herded and the easy familiarity of the guides.  These did not trouble Maude, who often annoyed me by asking naive questions herself.  I would nudge her.

One afternoon when, with other compatriots, we were being hurried through a famous castle, the guide unwittingly ushered us into a drawing-room where the owner and several guests were seated about a tea-table.  I shall never forget the stares they gave us before we had time precipitately to retreat, nor the feeling of disgust and rebellion that came over me.  This was heightened by the remark of a heavy, six-foot Ohioan with an infantile face and a genial manner.