e first things went badly, and when, within a
week of the wedding, Helen's father was drowned in attempting to ford
the Tweed on horseback, she chose to consider that her part of the
bargain was ended. Henceforward she was a wife only in name. Bluster and
storm as he might, she was more than the master of her husband, and
after one wild outburst he cringed before her. And as, before her
marriage, the wife had insisted on reinstating the greater number of the
old servants, who to fidelity to the old line added hostility to a
master whom they looked on as an interloper, the husband soon found it
to his advantage to conciliate the household by giving way to the whims
of his wife. Thereafter, the two met, if at all, only at meals.

For something over a year things continued on this unpleasant footing.
Then there came a day in spring, when Tweedside was tender with the
bursting of buds and the lush green of young grass, when birds sang
gaily from every thicket, and the hurrying brown water was dimpled into
countless rings by the rising trout. To Helen, listless and indifferent
even to Tweed's charm in springtime, came one of the younger servants
saying that a gentleman, desiring to speak to her, waited below. A
gentleman to see _her_? Nay, there must certainly be some mistake,
thought Helen. It must assuredly be one of the useless hangers-on of her
husband come to ask her to plead for him in regard to some trumpery
loan. Well! anything for a novelty, and to take her thoughts away from
herself. In this frame of mind she entered the lower room, where the
visitor stood with his back to the door, gazing from the window, beside
him a large deerhound.

"Well, sir," she exclaimed sharply, "what is there that I ... My God!
You!... Back from the dead! Back from the dead!" she wailed.

"Nay. Back from sickness and wounds; back from captivity. Many a message
have I sent you, Helen, during the long years; little did I think to
find you thus."

Apathy and listlessness no longer held her in bondage; the full horror
of the irrevocable gripped her. Tied for ever to a brute whom she
despised and hated, sacrificed to no purpose; whilst here, alive and
well, stood the man to whom in ardent youth she had plighted her
undisciplined heart. The thought maddened her. And as she struggled to
choke back this overwhelming rush of feeling, her husband's unwelcome
entrance broke the tension of a scene the strain of which was past
bearing.

Surely