And yet with all her love,
with all her matured intelligence, she had never lost a certain awe of
her husband, which his seniority had perhaps first implanted, and alas!
one fatal circumstance had gone far to render morbid.

They sat at breakfast. It was early spring, and though the sunshine
streamed through the windows, and from one of them there crept the odors
of the conservatory, a bright fire gleamed and crackled in the grate; and
shed a charm of cheerfulness through the room. Mr. Ferrars had a
newspaper in his hand, but not yet had he perused a line, for his son and
heir, a brave boy of three years old, a very model of patrician beauty,
was climbing his large chair, playing antics of many sorts, and even
affecting to pull his father's still rich and curling hair, so little awe
had the young Walter of the head of the house--while Mr. Farrars'
parental glee was like a deep bass to the child's crowing laugh. Lady
Lucy smiled too, but she shook her head, and said more than once,
"Naughty papa is spoiling Watty." It was a pretty scene; the room was
redolent of elegance, and the young mother, in her exquisitely simple but
tasteful morning dress, was one of its chief ornaments. Who would think
that beneath all this sweetness of life there was still a serpent!

A post was just in, and a servant entered with several letters; among
those delivered to Lady Lucy were two or three large unsightly,
ill-shaped epistles, that seemed strange company for the others. An
observing stranger might have noticed that Lady Lucy's cheek paled, and
then flushed; that she crushed up her letters together, without
immediately opening them, and that presently she slid the ugly ones into
the pocket of her satin apron. Mr. Ferrars read his almost with a
glance--for they were masculine letters, laconic, and to the point,
conveying necessary information, in three lines and a half--and he
smiled, as after a while he observed his wife apparently intent on a
truly feminine epistle--four sides of delicate paper closely crossed--and
exclaimed gaily:

"My dear Lucy, there's an hour's reading for you, at least; so I shall
ring and send Watty to the nursery, and settle steadily to the _Times_."

But though Lady Lucy really perused the letter, her mind refused to
retain the pleasant chit-chat gossip it contained. Her thoughst[*sic]
were far away, and had she narrowly examined her motives she would have
known that she bent over the friendly sheet chiefly