When taken away from the scene of his troubles, his spirits revived; afraid to encounter his own household alone, he had thought Albinia the cure for everything.  But at home, habit and association had proved too strong for her presence—­the grief, which he had tried to leave behind, had waited ready to meet him on the threshold, and the very sense that it was a melancholy welcome added to his depression, and made him less able to exert himself.  The old sorrows haunted the walls of the house, and above all the study, and tarried not in seizing on their unresisting victim.  Melancholy was in his nature, his indolence gave it force, and his habits were almost ineffaceable, and they were habits of quiet selfishness, formed by a resolute, though inert will, and fostered by an adoring wife.  A youth spent in India had not given him ideas of responsibilities beyond his own family, and his principles, though sound, had not expanded the views of duty with which he had started in life.

It was a positive pleasure to Albinia to discover that there had been an inefficient clergyman at Bayford before Mr. Dusautoy, and to know that during half the time that the present vicar had held the living, Mr. Kendal had been absent, so that his influence had had no time to work.  She began to understand her line of action.  It must be her effort, in all loving patience and gentleness, to raise her husband’s spirits and rouse his faculties; to make his powers available for the good of his fellow-creatures, to make him an active and happy man, and to draw him and his children together.  This was truly a task to make her heart throb high with hope and energy.  Strong and brave was that young heart, and not self-confident—­the difficulty made her only the more hopeful, because she saw it was her duty.  She was secure of her influence with him.  If he did exclude her from his study, he left her supreme elsewhere, and though she would have given the world that their sovereignty might be a joint one everywhere, still she allowed much for the morbid inveterate habit of dreading disturbance.  When he began by silence and not listening, she could always rouse him, and give him animation, and he was so much surprised and pleased whenever she entered into any of his pursuits, that she had full hope of drawing him out.

One day when the fog, instead of clearing off had turned to violent rain, Albinia had been out on parish work, and afterwards enlivening old Mrs. Meadows by dutifully spending an hour with her, while Maria was nursing a nervous headache—­she had been subject to headaches ever since...an ominous sigh supplied the rest.

But all the effect of Albinia’s bright kindness was undone, when the grandmother learnt that Gilbert was gone to his tutor, and would have to come home in the rain, and she gave such an account of his exceeding delicacy, that Albinia became alarmed, and set off at once that she might consult his father about sending for him.