to himself often enough how sad and dreary he was
in his desolate life. He had told himself that it must be so for the
remainder of all time to him, when Catherine Bailey had declared her
purpose to him of marrying the successful young lawyer. He had at
once made up his mind that his doom was fixed, and had not regarded
his solitude as any deep aggravation of his sorrow. But he had come
by degrees to find that a man should not give up his life because of
a fickle girl, and especially when he found her to be the mother of
ten flaxen haired infants. He had, too, as he declared to himself,
waited long enough.

But Mary Lawrie was very different from Catherine Bailey. The
Catherine he had known had been bright, and plump, and joyous, with a
quick good-natured wit, and a rippling laughter, which by its silvery
sound had robbed him of his heart. There was no plumpness, and no
silver-sounding laughter with Mary. She shall be described in the
next chapter. Let it suffice to say here that she was somewhat staid
in her demeanour, and not at all given to putting herself forward in
conversation. But every hour that he passed in her company he became
more and more sure that, if any wife could now make him happy, this
was the woman who could do so.

But of her manner to himself he doubted much. She was gratitude
itself for what he was prepared to do for her. But with her gratitude
was mingled respect, and almost veneration. She treated him at first
almost as a servant,--at any rate with none of the familiarity of a
friend, and hardly with the reserve of a grown-up child. Gradually,
in obedience to his evident wishes, she did drop her reserve,
and allowed herself to converse with him; but it was always as a
young person might with all modesty converse with her superior. He
struggled hard to overcome her reticence, and did at last succeed.
But still there was that respect, verging almost into veneration,
which seemed to crush him when he thought that he might begin to play
the lover.

He had got a pony carriage for her, which he insisted that she should
drive herself. "But I never have driven," she had said, taking her
place, and doubtfully assuming the reins, while he sat beside her.
She had at this time been six months at Croker's Hall.

"There must be a beginning for everything, and you shall begin to
drive now." Then he took great trouble with her, teaching her how to
hold the reins, and how to use the whip, till at last some