ees in enraptured adoration. Since his
first wife's death in his youth, he had dwelt almost entirely in the
country at his house there, which was fine and stately, but had been kept
gloomily half closed for a decade. His town establishment had, in truth,
never been opened since his bereavement; and now--an elderly man--he
returned to the gay world he had almost forgotten, with a bride whose
youth and beauty set it aflame. What wonder that his head almost reeled
at times and that he lost his breath before the sum of his strange late
bliss, and the new lease of brilliant life which seemed to have been
given to him.

In the days when, while in the country, he had heard such rumours of the
lawless days of Sir Jeoffry Wildairs' daughter, when he had heard of her
dauntless boldness, her shrewish temper, and her violent passions, he had
been awed at the thought of what a wife such a woman would make for a
gentleman accustomed to a quiet life, and he had indeed striven hard to
restrain the desperate admiration he was forced to admit she had inspired
in him even at her first ball.

The effort had, in sooth, been in vain, and he had passed many a
sleepless night; and when, as time went on, he beheld her again and
again, and saw with his own eyes, as well as heard from others, of the
great change which seemed to have taken place in her manners and
character, he began devoutly to thank Heaven for the alteration, as for a
merciful boon vouchsafed to him. He had been wise enough to know that
even a stronger man than himself could never conquer or rule her; and
when she seemed to begin to rule herself and bear herself as befitted her
birth and beauty, he had dared to allow himself to dream of what
perchance might be if he had great good fortune.

In these days of her union with him, he was, indeed, almost humbly amazed
at the grace and kindness she showed him every hour they passed in each
other's company. He knew that there were men, younger and handsomer than
himself, who, being wedded to beauties far less triumphant than she,
found that their wives had but little time to spare them from the world,
which knelt at their feet, and that in some fashion they themselves
seemed to fall into the background. But 'twas not so with this woman,
powerful and worshipped though she might be. She bore herself with the
high dignity of her rank, but rendered to him the gracious respect and
deference due both to his position and his merit.