omplexion, or otherwise, the
Countess looked pale, and the reverse of blooming. After their marriage
her husband took her to London, and she saw the gaieties of a season
there; then they returned to Knollingwood Hall, and thus a year passed
away.

Before their marriage her husband had seemed to care but little about her
inability to love him passionately. 'Only let me win you,' he had said,
'and I will submit to all that.' But now her lack of warmth seemed to
irritate him, and he conducted himself towards her with a resentfulness
which led to her passing many hours with him in painful silence. The
heir-presumptive to the title was a remote relative, whom Lord
Uplandtowers did not exclude from the dislike he entertained towards many
persons and things besides, and he had set his mind upon a lineal
successor. He blamed her much that there was no promise of this, and
asked her what she was good for.

On a particular day in her gloomy life a letter, addressed to her as Mrs.
Willowes, reached Lady Uplandtowers from an unexpected quarter. A
sculptor in Pisa, knowing nothing of her second marriage, informed her
that the long-delayed life-size statue of Mr. Willowes, which, when her
husband left that city, he had been directed to retain till it was sent
for, was still in his studio. As his commission had not wholly been
paid, and the statue was taking up room he could ill spare, he should be
glad to have the debt cleared off, and directions where to forward the
figure. Arriving at a time when the Countess was beginning to have
little secrets (of a harmless kind, it is true) from her husband, by
reason of their growing estrangement, she replied to this letter without
saying a word to Lord Uplandtowers, sending off the balance that was
owing to the sculptor, and telling him to despatch the statue to her
without delay.

It was some weeks before it arrived at Knollingwood Hall, and, by a
singular coincidence, during the interval she received the first
absolutely conclusive tidings of her Edmond's death. It had taken place
years before, in a foreign land, about six months after their parting,
and had been induced by the sufferings he had already undergone, coupled
with much depression of spirit, which had caused him to succumb to a
slight ailment. The news was sent her in a brief and formal letter from
some relative of Willowes's in another part of England.

Her grief took the form of passionate pity for his misfortune