surely have
altered his mind--he would have found now how hard it was to live alone,
to live without love--he would have found that there was something
dearer in the world than family pride--he would have discovered that
love outweighed everything else. Then she saw that her anticipations
were all wrong--he preferred his dead ancestors to his living wife.

She went back to Winiston House and took up the dreary round of life
again. She might have made her lot more endurable and happier, she might
have traveled, have sought society and amusement; but she had no heart
for any of these things. She had spent the year and a half of her lonely
married life in profound study, thinking to herself that if he should
claim her he would be pleased to find her yet more accomplished and
educated. She was indefatigable, and it was all for him.

Now that she was going back, she was without this mainspring of
hope--her old studies and pursuits wearied her. To what end and for what
purpose had been all her study, all her hard work? He would never know
of her proficiency; and she would not care to study for any other object
than to please him.

"What am I to do with my life," she moaned. "Mariana in the moated
grange was not more to be pitied than I."

How often the words occurred to her:

"The day is dreary,
'He cometh not,' she said:
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
would that I were dead.'"

It was one of the strangest, dullest, saddest lives that human being
ever led. That she wearied of it was no wonder. She was tired of the
sorrow, the suffering, the despair--so tired that after a time she fell
ill; and then she lay longing for death.

Chapter XXXII.

It was a glorious September, and the Scottish moors looked as they had
not looked for years; the heather grew in rich profusion, the grouse
were plentiful. The prospects for sportsmen were excellent.

Not knowing what else to do, Lord Arleigh resolved to go to Scotland for
the shooting; there was a sort of savage satisfaction in the idea of
living so many weeks alone, without on-lookers, where he could be dull
if he liked without comment--where he could lie for hours together on
the heather looking up at the blue skies, and puzzling over the problem
of his life--where, when the fit of despair seized him, he could indulge
in it, and no one wonder at him. He hired a shooting-lodge called
Glaburn. In his present state of mind it seemed to him t