at any rate!

The second change, the change that I have observed in her character,
has not surprised me, because I was prepared for it in this case by the
tone of her letters. Now that she is at home again, I find her just as
unwilling to enter into any details on the subject of her married life
as I had previously found her all through the time of our separation,
when we could only communicate with each other by writing. At the
first approach I made to the forbidden topic she put her hand on my
lips with a look and gesture which touchingly, almost painfully,
recalled to my memory the days of her girlhood and the happy bygone
time when there were no secrets between us.

"Whenever you and I are together, Marian," she said, "we shall both be
happier and easier with one another, if we accept my married life for
what it is, and say and think as little about it as possible. I would
tell you everything, darling, about myself," she went on, nervously
buckling and unbuckling the ribbon round my waist, "if my confidences
could only end there. But they could not--they would lead me into
confidences about my husband too; and now I am married, I think I had
better avoid them, for his sake, and for your sake, and for mine. I
don't say that they would distress you, or distress me--I wouldn't have
you think that for the world. But--I want to be so happy, now I have
got you back again, and I want you to be so happy too----" She broke
off abruptly, and looked round the room, my own sitting-room, in which
we were talking. "Ah!" she cried, clapping her hands with a bright
smile of recognition, "another old friend found already! Your
book-case, Marian--your dear-little-shabby-old-satin-wood
book-case--how glad I am you brought it with you from Limmeridge! And
the horrid heavy man's umbrella, that you always would walk out with
when it rained! And first and foremost of all, your own dear, dark,
clever, gipsy-face, looking at me just as usual! It is so like home
again to be here. How can we make it more like home still? I will put
my father's portrait in your room instead of in mine--and I will keep
all my little treasures from Limmeridge here--and we will pass hours
and hours every day with these four friendly walls round us. Oh,
Marian!" she said, suddenly seating herself on a footstool at my knees,
and looking up earnestly in my face, "promise you will never marry, and
leave me. It is selfish to say so, but you are so much bett