in, in a fit of sullen apathy,
would resign it to its nurse, and not ask to see it for hours. It was
very strange and inexplicable, her conduct, altogether; more especially,
as with her return to health came no return of cheerfulness or hope. The
dark gloom that overshadowed her life seemed to settle into a chronic
disease, rooted and incurable. She never went out; she returned no
visits; she gave no invitations to those who came to repeat theirs.
Gradually people fell off; they grew tired of that sullen coldness in
which Lady Thetford wrapped herself as in a mantle, until Mr. Knight and
Dr. Gale grew to be almost her only visitors. "Mariana, in the Moated
Grange," never led a more solitary and dreary existence than the
handsome young widow, who dwelt a recluse at Thetford Towers. For she
was very handsome still, of a pale moonlight sort of beauty, the great,
dark eyes and abundant dark hair, making her fixed and changeless pallor
all the more remarkable.

Months and seasons went by. Summers followed winters, and Lady Thetford
still buried herself alive in the gray old manor--and the little heir
was six years old. A delicate child still, puny and sickly, petted and
spoiled, indulged in every childish whim and caprice. His mother's image
and idol--no look of the fair-haired, sanguine, blue-eyed Thetford
sturdiness in his little, pinched, pale face, large, dark eyes, and
crisp, black ringlets. The years had gone by like a slow dream; life was
stagnant enough in St. Gosport, doubly stagnant at Thetford Towers,
whose mistress rarely went abroad beyond her own gates, save when she
took her little son out for an airing in the pony-phaeton.

She had taken him out for one of those airings on a July afternoon, when
he had nearly accomplished his seventh year. They had driven seaward
some miles from the manor-house, and Lady Thetford and her little boy
had got out, and were strolling leisurely up and down the hot, white
sands, whilst the groom waited with the pony-phaeton just within sight.

The long July afternoon wore on. The sun that had blazed all day like a
wheel of fire, dropped lower and lower into the crimson west. The wide
sea shone red with the reflections of the lurid glory in the heavens,
and the numberless waves glittered and flashed as if sown with stars. A
faint, far-off breeze swept over the sea, salt and cold; and the
fishermen's boats danced along with the red sunset glinting on their
sails.

Up and down, sl