who had been
sitting beside her on the sofa, passive, silent, all but motionless,
started a little.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" she said, in the first natural tone that had been heard
in her voice all day. "I did so want to see the children."

Dr. Grey went out of the room at once, and Mrs. Ferguson had the good
sense to follow, taking her husband with her. "For," as she said
afterward, "the first sight of three stepchildren, and she, poor dear, such
a mere girl, must be a very unpleasant thing." For her part, she was
thankful that when she married James Ferguson he was a bachelor, with
not a soul belonging to him except an old aunt. She wouldn't like to be
in poor Mrs. Grey's shoes--"dear me, no!"--with those two old ladies
who have lived at the Lodge ever since the first Mrs. Grey died. She
wondered how on earth Miss Oakley would manage them. And upon
James Ferguson's suggesting "in the same way as she managed every
body," his wife soundly berated him for saying such a silly thing,
though he had, with the usual acuteness of silent people, said a wiser
thing than he was aware of.

Meantime Christian was left alone, for the first time that day, and many
days; for solitude was a blessing not easy to get in the Ferguson's large,
bustling family. Perhaps she did not seek it--perhaps she dared not.
Anyhow, during the month that had been occupied with her marriage
preparations, she had scarcely been ten minutes alone, not even at
night, for two children shared her room--the loving little things whom
she had taught for two years, first as daily, and then as resident
governess, and to whom she had persisted in giving lessons till the last.

She stood with the same fixed composedness--not composure--of
manner; the quietness of a person who, having certain things to go
through, goes through them in a sort of dream, almost without
recognizing her own identity. Women, more than men, are subject to
this strange, somnambulistic, mental condition, the result of strong
emotion, in which they both do and endure to an extent that men would
never think of or find possible.

After a minute she moved slightly, took up and laid down a book, but
still mechanically, as if she did not quite know what she was doing
until, suddenly, she caught sight of her wedding-ring. She regarded it
with something very like affright; tried convulsively to pull it off;
but it was rather tight; and before it had passed a finger-joint she
had recoll