driven him mad. And so it came about that to see that she was
tender and noble he watched her, and to be sure that she was no more
than this he knew he watched her too, calling himself ignoble that
Nature so prompted him.

There was a thing she had said to him but a week after the marriage
which had sunk deep into his soul and given him comfort.

"From my lord I shall learn new virtues," she said, with a singular
smile, which somehow to his mind hid somewhat of pathos. "'New
virtues,' say I; all are new to me. At Wildairs we concerned ourselves
little with such matters." She lifted her eyes and let them rest upon
him with proud gravity. "He is the first good man," she said, "whom I
have ever known."

'Twas not as this man observed her life that the world looked on at it,
but in a different manner and with a different motive, and yet both the
world and his Grace of Osmonde beheld the same thing, which was that my
Lord Dunstanwolde's happiness was a thing which grew greater and deeper
as time passed, instead of failing him. When she went to Court and set
the town on fire with her beauty and her bearing, had her lord been a
man of youth and charm matching her own, the grace and sweetness of her
manner to him could not have made him a more envied man. The wit and
spirit with which she had ruled her father and his cronies stood her in
as good stead as ever in the great World of Fashion, as young beaux and
old ones who paid court to her might have told; but of her pungency of
speech and pride of bearing when she would punish or reprove, my lord
knew nothing, he but knew tones of her voice which were tender, looks
which were her loveliest, and most womanly, warm, and sweet.

They were so sweet at times that Osmonde turned his gaze away that he
might not see them, and when his Lordship, as was natural, would have
talked of her dearness and beauties, he used all his powers to gently
draw him from the subject without seeming to lack sympathy. But when a
man is the idolatrous slave of happy love and, being of mature years,
has few, nay, but one friend young enough to tell his joy to with the
feeling that he is within reach of the comprehension of it, 'tis
inevitable that to this man he will speak often of that which fills his
being.

His Lordship's revealings of himself and his tenderness were
involuntary things. There was no incident of his life of which one
being was not the central figure, no emotion which had not its bir