e
dwelt upon; only their memory was always there. She paid for these
happy rambles with her baby by the depression which awaited her on
her re-entrance into the dark, confined house that was her home; its
very fulness of comfort was an oppression. Then, when her husband
saw her pale and fatigued, he was annoyed, and sometimes upbraided
her for doing what was so unnecessary as to load herself with her
child. She knew full well it was not that that caused her weariness.
By-and-by, when he inquired and discovered that all these walks were
taken in one direction, out towards the sea, he grew jealous of her
love for the inanimate ocean. Was it connected in her mind with the
thought of Kinraid? Why did she so perseveringly, in wind or cold,
go out to the sea-shore; the western side, too, where, if she went
but far enough, she would come upon the mouth of the Haytersbank
gully, the point at which she had last seen Kinraid? Such fancies
haunted Philip's mind for hours after she had acknowledged the
direction of her walks. But he never said a word that could
distinctly tell her he disliked her going to the sea, otherwise she
would have obeyed him in this, as in everything else; for absolute
obedience to her husband seemed to be her rule of life at this
period--obedience to him who would so gladly have obeyed her
smallest wish had she but expressed it! She never knew that Philip
had any painful association with the particular point on the
sea-shore that she instinctively avoided, both from a consciousness
of wifely duty, and also because the sight of it brought up so much
sharp pain.

Philip used to wonder if the dream that preceded her illness was the
suggestive cause that drew her so often to the shore. Her illness
consequent upon that dream had filled his mind, so that for many
months he himself had had no haunting vision of Kinraid to disturb
his slumbers. But now the old dream of Kinraid's actual presence by
Philip's bedside began to return with fearful vividness. Night after
night it recurred; each time with some new touch of reality, and
close approach; till it was as if the fate that overtakes all men
were then, even then, knocking at his door.

In his business Philip prospered. Men praised him because he did
well to himself. He had the perseverance, the capability for
head-work and calculation, the steadiness and general forethought
which might have made him a great merchant if he had lived in a
large city. Without a