for he had been ailing of late, though, as
was supposed, not seriously. Though she often visited the poor, she had
never entered her under-gardener's home before, and was much
surprised--even grieved and dismayed--to find that he was too ill to rise
from his bed. She went back to her mansion and returned with some
delicate soup, that she might have a reason for seeing him.

His condition was so feeble and alarming, and his face so thin, that it
quite shocked her softening heart, and gazing upon him she said, 'You
must get well--you must! I have been hard with you--I know it. I will
not be so again.'

The sick and dying man--for he was dying indeed--took her hand and
pressed it to his lips. 'Too late, my darling, too late!' he murmured.

'But you _must not_ die! Oh, you must not!' she said. And on an impulse
she bent down and whispered some words to him, blushing as she had
blushed in her maiden days.

He replied by a faint wan smile. 'Time was! . . . but that's past!' he
said, 'I must die!'

And die he did, a few days later, as the sun was going down behind the
garden-wall. Her harshness seemed to come trebly home to her then, and
she remorsefully exclaimed against herself in secret and alone. Her one
desire now was to erect some tribute to his memory, without its being
recognized as her handiwork. In the completion of this scheme there
arrived a few months later a handsome stained-glass window for the
church; and when it was unpacked and in course of erection Lord Icenway
strolled into the building with his wife.

'"_Erected to his memory by his grieving widow_,"' he said, reading the
legend on the glass. 'I didn't know that he had a wife; I've never seen
her.'

'Oh yes, you must have, Icenway; only you forget,' replied his lady
blandly. 'But she didn't live with him, and was seldom seen visiting
him, because there were differences between them; which, as is usually
the case, makes her all the more sorry now.'

'And go ruining herself by this expensive ruby-and-azure glass-design.'

'She is not poor, they say.'

As Lord Icenway grew older he became crustier and crustier, and whenever
he set eyes on his wife's boy by her other husband he would burst out
morosely, saying,

''Tis a very odd thing, my lady, that you could oblige your first
husband, and couldn't oblige me.'

'Ah! if I had only thought of it sooner!' she murmured.

'What?' said he.

'Nothing, dearest,' replied Lady Icenway.