lers; just now the snow has kept them away, but then
I have had our cousin Erle. Oh, he is such a pleasant companion, he is
so good-natured and full of fun. I shall miss him dreadfully when he
goes back to London next week."

"You will have to be content with your husband's society," observed
Raby, smiling. It was a pity that neither he nor Margaret saw the
lovely look on Fay's face that answered this; it would have spoken to
them of the underlying depths of tenderness that there was in that
young heart.

"Oh, yes," she returned, simply, "but then, you see, Hugh, I mean my
husband, is so extremely busy, he never comes in until luncheon has
been waiting ever so long, and very often he has to go out again
afterward. Sometimes, when I know he has gone to Pierrepoint, I ride
over there to meet him. He used to ride and drive with me very often
when we first came home," she continued, sorrowfully, "but now he has
no time. Oh, he does far too much, every one tells him so; he is so
tired in the evening that he is hardly fit for anything, and yet he
will sit up so late."

Raby's sightless eyes seemed to turn involuntarily to the window where
Margaret sat, her pale face bending still lower over her work. This
last speech of Lady Redmond's perplexed him still more. The Hugh who
had courted Margaret had been a good-natured idler in his eyes; he had
heard him talk about his shooting and fishing with something like
enthusiasm; he had been eager to tell the number of heads of grouse he
had bagged, or to describe the exact weight of the salmon he had taken
last year in Scotland, but Raby had never looked upon him as an active
man of business. If this were true, Hugh's wife must spend many lonely
hours, but there was no discontented chord in her bright voice.

"I feel dreadfully as though I want to help him," continued Fay. "I
can not bear to see him so tired. I asked him to let me go and visit
some of the poor people who belong to us--he is building new cottages
for them, because he says that they are living in tumble-down places
only fit for pigs--but he will not hear of it; he says I am too young,
and that he can not allow me to go into such dirty places, and yet he
goes himself, though he says it makes him feel quite ill."

Margaret's head drooped still lower, her eyes were full of tears; he
had not forgotten then! he had promised to build those cottages when
she had begged him to do so. She remembered they had chosen the site