b before her. His
former levity forsook him, and Anne wondered at this change in him, and
brooded over the possible cause of his serious and unintelligible
silences. She attributed them to some deep personal preoccupation of
which she was not the object.

Meanwhile her days went on much as before, a serene and dignified
procession to the outward eye. She was thankful that she had so
established her religion of the household that its services could still
continue in their punctual order, after the joy of the spirit had
departed from them. The more she felt that she was losing, hour by hour,
her love of the house in Prior Street, the more she clung to the
observances that held her days together. She had become a pale, sad-eyed,
perfunctory priestess of the home. Majendie protested against what he
called her base superstition, her wholesale sacrifice to the gods of the
hearth. He forbade her to stay so much indoors, or to sit so long in
Edith's room.

One afternoon he came home unexpectedly and found her there, doing
nothing, but watching Edith, who dozed. He touched her gently, and told
her to get up and go out for a walk.

"I'm too tired," she whispered.

"Then go upstairs and lie down."

She went; but, instead of lying down, she wandered through the house,
restless and unsettled. She was possessed by a terrible sense of
isolation. It came over her that this house of which she was the
mistress did not in the least belong to her. She had not been consulted
or thought of in any of its arrangements. There was no place in it that
appealed to her as her own. She went into the little grave old-fashioned
drawing-room. It had a beauty she approved of, a dignity that was in
keeping with her own traditions, but to-day its aspect roused in her
discontent and irritation. The room had remained unchanged since the days
when it was inhabited, first by her husband's mother, then by his aunt,
then by his sister. He had handed it over, just as it stood, to his wife.
It was full, the whole house was full, of portraits of the Majendies;
Majendies in oils; Majendies in water-colours; Majendies in crayons, in
miniatures and silhouettes. She thought of Mrs. Eliott's room in Thurston
Square, of the bookcases, the bronzes, the triptych with its saints in
glory, and of how Fanny sat enthroned among these things that reflected
completely her cultured individuality. Fanny had counted. Her rarity had
been appreciated by the man who married her