arn to
live without me."

"Conrad, what have I done that you should talk of such a thing? Have I
asked you to let Violet come home?"

"No, but you have behaved mopishly of late, as if you were pining for
her return."

"I pine for nothing but your love."

"That has always been yours."

With this assurance Mrs. Winstanley was fain to content herself, but
even this assurance did not make her happy. The glory and brightness
had departed from her life somehow; and neither kind words nor friendly
smiles from the Captain could lure them back. There are stages in the
lives of all of us when life seems hardly worth living: not periods of
great calamity, but dull level bits of road along which the journey
seems very weary. The sun has hidden himself behind gray clouds, cold
winds are blowing up from the bitter east, the birds have left off
singing, the landscape has lost its charm. We plod on drearily, and can
see no Pole Star in life's darkening sky.

It had been thus of late with Pamela Winstanley. Slowly and gradually
the conviction had come to her that her second marriage had been a
foolish and ill-advised transaction, resulting inevitably in sorrow and
unavailing remorse. The sweet delusion that it had been a love-match on
Captain Winstanley's side, as well as on her own, abandoned her all at
once, and she found herself face to face with stern common-sense.

That scene about Theodore's bill had exercised a curious effect upon
her mind. To an intellect so narrow, trifles were important, and that
the husband who had so much admired and praised the elegance of her
appearance could grudge the cost of her toilet galled her sorely. It
was positively for her the first revelation of her husband's character.
His retrenchments in household expenses she had been ready to applaud
as praiseworthy economies; but when he assailed her own extravagance,
she saw in him a husband who loved far too wisely to love well.

"If he cared for me, if he valued my good looks, he could never object
to my spending a few pounds upon a dress," she told herself.

She could not take the Captain's common-sense view of a subject so
important to herself. Love in her mind meant a blind indulgence like
the Squire's. Love that could count the cost of its idol's caprices,
and calculate the chances of the future, was not love. That feeling of
poverty, too, was a new sensation to the mistress of the Abbey House,
and a very unpleasant one. Married very youn