The second change, the change that I have observed in her character, has not surprised me, because I was prepared for it in this case by the tone of her letters.  Now that she is at home again, I find her just as unwilling to enter into any details on the subject of her married life as I had previously found her all through the time of our separation, when we could only communicate with each other by writing.  At the first approach I made to the forbidden topic she put her hand on my lips with a look and gesture which touchingly, almost painfully, recalled to my memory the days of her girlhood and the happy bygone time when there were no secrets between us.

“Whenever you and I are together, Marian,” she said, “we shall both be happier and easier with one another, if we accept my married life for what it is, and say and think as little about it as possible.  I would tell you everything, darling, about myself,” she went on, nervously buckling and unbuckling the ribbon round my waist, “if my confidences could only end there.  But they could not—­they would lead me into confidences about my husband too; and now I am married, I think I had better avoid them, for his sake, and for your sake, and for mine.  I don’t say that they would distress you, or distress me—­I wouldn’t have you think that for the world.  But—­I want to be so happy, now I have got you back again, and I want you to be so happy too——­” She broke off abruptly, and looked round the room, my own sitting-room, in which we were talking.  “Ah!” she cried, clapping her hands with a bright smile of recognition, “another old friend found already!  Your bookcase, Marian—­your dear-little-shabby-old-satin-wood bookcase—­how glad I am you brought it with you from Limmeridge!  And the horrid heavy man’s umbrella, that you always would walk out with when it rained!  And first and foremost of all, your own dear, dark, clever, gipsy-face, looking at me just as usual!  It is so like home again to be here.  How can we make it more like home still?  I will put my father’s portrait in your room instead of in mine—­and I will keep all my little treasures from Limmeridge here—­and we will pass hours and hours every day with these four friendly walls round us.  Oh, Marian!” she said, suddenly seating herself on a footstool at my knees, and looking up earnestly in my face, “promise you will never marry, and leave me.  It is selfish to say so, but you are so much better off as a single woman—­ unless—­unless you are very fond of your husband—­but you won’t be very fond of anybody but me, will you?” She stopped again, crossed my hands on my lap, and laid her face on them.  “Have you been writing many letters, and receiving many letters lately?” she asked, in low, suddenly-altered tones.  I understood what the question meant, but I thought it my duty not to encourage her by meeting her half way.  “Have you heard from him?” she went on, coaxing me to forgive the more direct appeal on which she now ventured, by kissing my hands, upon which her face still rested.  “Is he well and happy, and getting on in his profession?  Has he recovered himself—­and forgotten me?”