e troublous days had budded
and bloomed and been mellowed by time and trial. Nor did Nelly pause to
consider that had she chosen, she whose own mother's heart had never
melted towards her, might have been nestled in that bosom as in an ark
of peace.

When Lady Staneholme conducted Nelly down the wide staircase into the
chill dining-room, and to the chair opposite the claret-jug of the
master of the house, Nelly drew back with sullen determination.

"Na, but, my bairn, I'm blithe for you to fill my place; Staneholme's
mither may well make room for Staneholme's wife," urged the lady,
gently.

But Nelly remained childishly rooted in her refusal to preside at his
board, unless compelled; and her brow, knit at the remembrance of her
fall, was set to meet the further encounter. Joan and Madge and Mysie,
with their blooming cheeks, and their kissing-strings new for the
occasion, stared as if their strange sister was but half endowed with
mother wit; and Lady Staneholme hesitated until Adam Home uttered his
short, emphatic "As she pleases, mother," while the flush flew to his
forehead, and his firm lip shook.

Staneholme had resolved never to control the wife he had forced into his
arms, beyond the cold, daily intercourse which men will interchange with
a deadly foe, as well as with a trusty frere; never to approach her
side, nor attempt to assuage her malice nor court her frozen lips into
a smile. This was his purpose, and he abode by it. He farmed his land,
he hunted, and speared salmon, was rocked in his fishing-boat as far as
St. Abbs, read political pamphlets, and sat late over his wine, and
sometimes abetted the bold smuggling, much like his contemporaries. But
no pursuit which he followed with fitful excess seemed to satisfy him as
it did others, and he never sought to supplement it by courting his
alien wife.

Lady Staneholme would fain have made her town-bred daughter-in-law
enamoured with the duties of a country life, and cheered the strange
joylessness of her honeymoon. Failing in this attempt, she, with a
covert sigh, half-pain, half-pleasure, resumed the old oversight of
larder and dairy. Such care was then the delight of many an
unsophisticated laird's helpmate; and, to the contented Lady of
Staneholme, it had quite made up for the partial deprivation of social
intercourse to which her infirmity had subjected her. Joan, Madge, and
Mysie, wearied of haughty Nelly after they had grown accustomed to the
grand