violent transition, no great
change of atmosphere, in the beginnings of their wedded life. Dr. Eben
had now lived so much at "Gunn's," that it seemed no strange thing for
him to live there altogether. If it chafed him sometimes that it was
Hetty's house and not his, Hetty's estate, Hetty's right and rule, he
never betrayed it. And there was little reason that it should chafe him;
for, from the day of Hetty Gunn's marriage, she was a changed woman in
the habits and motives of her whole life. The farm was to her, as if it
were not. All the currents of her being were set now in a new channel,
and flowed as impetuously there as they had been wont to flow in the old
ones. Her husband, his needs, his movements, were now the centre around
which her fine and ceaseless activity revolved. There was not a trace of
sentimental expression to this absorption. A careless observer might
have said that her manner was deficient in tenderness; that she was
singularly chary of caresses and words of love. But one who saw deeper
would observe that not the smallest motion of the doctor's escaped her
eye; not his lightest word failed to reach her ear; and every act of
hers was planned with either direct or indirect reference to him. In his
absence, she was preoccupied and uneasy; in his presence, she was
satisfied, at rest, and her face wore a sort of quiet radiance hard to
describe, but very beautiful to see. As for Dr. Eben, he thought he had
entered into a new world. Warmly as he had loved and admired Hetty, he
had not been prepared for these depths in her nature. Every day he said
to her, "Oh, Hetty, Hetty! I never knew you. I did not dream you were
like this." She would answer lightly, laughingly, perhaps almost
brusquely; but intense feeling would glow in her face as a light shines
through glass; and often, when she turned thus lightly away from him,
there were passionate tears in her eyes. It very soon became her habit
to drive with him wherever he went. Old Doctor Tuthill had died some
months before, and now the county circuit was Doctor Eben's. His love
of his profession was a passion, and nothing now stood in the way of
his gratifying it to the utmost. Books, journals, all poured in upon
him. Hetty would have liked to be omniscient that she might procure for
him all he could desire. Every morning they might be seen dashing over
the country with a pair of fleet, strong gray horses. In the afternoon,
they drove a pair of black ponies fo