g an aspect of youth.
Rachel's heart smote her at having left him; it reproached her with
having known something like happiness in these days, and her old sense
of troubled, anxious responsibility came back. She begged him to come
and dine with them that evening. He demurred at first at making a third
on their first night in their own house. Rachel protested, and overruled
all his objections. She arrived at home just in time to dress for
dinner, finding her husband surprised and somewhat discomfited at her
prolonged absence. He had wanted to go proudly all over the house with
her, and see their new domain. But as he saw her come up the stairs, he
realised that black care had sprung up behind her again, that this was
not the confiding, naively happy Rachel who had walked with him on the
moors.

"There you are!" he said. "I was just wondering what had become of you."

"I was with my father," Rachel said, in a tone in which there was a
tinge of unconscious surprise at what his tone had conveyed. "And,
Francis, he looks so dreadfully ill!"

"Does he?" said Rendel, concerned. "I am sorry."

"He looks really broken down," she said, "and oh, so much older. I am
sure it has been bad for him being alone all this time. I ought not to
have stayed away so long."

"Well, it has not been very long," said Rendel with a natural feeling
that two weeks had not been an unreasonable extension of their wedding
tour.

"He looks as if he had felt it so," she answered. "But at any rate, I
have persuaded him to come to dinner with us to-night; I am sure it will
be good for him."

"To-night?" said Rendel, again with a lurking surprise that for this
first night their privacy should not have been respected.

"Yes," said Rachel. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Oh, of course not," he replied, again stifling a misgiving.

"You see," said Rachel, "I thought it might amuse him, and be a change
for him, and then you might play a game of chess with him after dinner,
perhaps."

"Of course, of course," Rendel answered. But the misgiving remained.

When, however, Sir William appeared, Rendel's heart almost smote him as
Rachel's had done, he seemed so curiously broken down and dispirited.
They talked of their Scotch experiences, they spoke a little of the
affairs of the day, but, as Rendel knew of old, this was a dangerous
topic, which, hitherto, he had succeeded either in avoiding altogether
or in treating with a studied moderation which might so