, and old china, to convey from one
house to another, is a matter which involves delays--when Mr Wentworth
went to the railway station with Mrs Morgan to see her off finally,
her husband having gone to London with the intention of joining her in
the new house. Naturally, it was not without serious thoughts that the
Rector's wife left the place in which she had made the first beginning
of her active life, not so successfully as she had hoped. She could
not help recalling, as she went along the familiar road, the hopes so
vivid as to be almost certainties with which she had come into
Carlingford. The long waiting was then over, and the much-respected
era had arrived and existence had seemed to be opening in all its
fulness and strength before the two who had looked forward to it so
long. It was not much more than six months ago; but Mrs Morgan had
made a great many discoveries in the mean time. She had found out the
wonderful difference between anticipation and reality; and that life,
even to a happy woman married after long patience to the man of her
choice, was not the smooth road it looked, but a rough path enough
cut into dangerous ruts, through which generations of men and women
followed each other without ever being able to mend the way. She was
not so sure as she used to be of a great many important matters which
it is a wonderful consolation to be certain of--but, notwithstanding,
had to go on as if she had no doubts, though the clouds of a defeat,
in which, certainly, no honour, though a good deal of the _prestige_
of inexperience had been lost, were still looming behind. She gave a
little sigh as she shook Mr Wentworth's hand at parting. "A great many
things have happened in six months," she said--"one never could have
anticipated so many changes in what looks so short a period of one's
life"--and as the train which she had watched so often rushed past that
new bit of wall on which the Virginian creeper was beginning to grow
luxuriantly, which screened the railway from the Rectory windows, there
were tears in Mrs Morgan's eyes. Only six months and so much had
happened!--what might not happen in all those months, in all those years
of life which scarcely looked so hopeful as of old? She preferred
turning her back upon Carlingford, though it was the least comfortable
side of the carriage, and put down her veil to shield her eyes from the
dust, or perhaps from the inspection of her fellow-travellers: and once
more t