Sir Hugh yawned for the twentieth time behind his paper, rubbed his eyes, stretched himself, and then let down the window and looked absently down the long country road winding through stubble land; and then at the eddying heaps of dry crisp leaves now blown by a strong November wind under the horses' feet, and now whirling in crazy circles like witches on Walpurgis's night, until after a shivering remonstrance from his little wife he put up the window with a jerk, and threw himself back with a discontented air on the cushions.
"There is nothing to be seen for a mile or two, Fay, and it is growing dusk now; it will soon be too dark to distinguish a single object;" and so saying, he relapsed into silence, and took up the obnoxious paper again, though the words were scarcely legible in the twilight; while the young bride tried to restrain her weariness, and sat patiently in her corner. Poor Hugh, he was already secretly repenting of the hasty step he had taken; two months of Alpine scenery, of quaint old German cities, of rambling through galleries of art treasures with his child-bride, and Hugh had already wearied of his new bonds. All at once he had awakened from his brief delusion with an agony of remembrance, with a terrible heart longing and homesickness, with a sense of satiety and vacuum. Fay's gentleness and beauty palled on him; her artless questioning fatigued him. In his secret soul he cried out that she was a mere child and no mate for him, and that he wanted Margaret.
If he had only told his young wife, if he had confided to her pure soul the secret that burdened his, child as she was, she would have understood and pitied and forgiven him; the very suffering would have given her added womanliness and gained his respect, and through that bitter knowledge, honestly told and generously received, a new and better Fay would have risen to win her husband's love.
But he did not tell her--such a thought never entered his mind. So day by day her youth and innocent gayety only alienated him more, until he grew to look upon her as a mere child, who must be petted and humored, but who could never be his friend.
Yes, he was bringing home his bride to Redmond Hall, and that bride was not Margaret. In place of Margaret's grand face, framed in its dead-brown hair and deep, pathetic eyes, was a childish face, with a small rosebud mouth that was just now quivering and plaintive.