"Oh, yes," she returned, simply, "but then, you see, Hugh, I mean my husband, is so extremely busy, he never comes in until luncheon has been waiting ever so long, and very often he has to go out again afterward. Sometimes, when I know he has gone to Pierrepoint, I ride over there to meet him. He used to ride and drive with me very often when we first came home," she continued, sorrowfully, "but now he has no time. Oh, he does far too much, every one tells him so; he is so tired in the evening that he is hardly fit for anything, and yet he will sit up so late."
Raby's sightless eyes seemed to turn involuntarily to the window where Margaret sat, her pale face bending still lower over her work. This last speech of Lady Redmond's perplexed him still more. The Hugh who had courted Margaret had been a good-natured idler in his eyes; he had heard him talk about his shooting and fishing with something like enthusiasm; he had been eager to tell the number of heads of grouse he had bagged, or to describe the exact weight of the salmon he had taken last year in Scotland, but Raby had never looked upon him as an active man of business. If this were true, Hugh's wife must spend many lonely hours, but there was no discontented chord in her bright voice.
"I feel dreadfully as though I want to help him," continued Fay. "I can not bear to see him so tired. I asked him to let me go and visit some of the poor people who belong to us--he is building new cottages for them, because he says that they are living in tumble-down places only fit for pigs--but he will not hear of it; he says I am too young, and that he can not allow me to go into such dirty places, and yet he goes himself, though he says it makes him feel quite ill."
Margaret's head drooped still lower, her eyes were full of tears; he had not forgotten then! he had promised to build those cottages when she had begged him to do so. She remembered they had chosen the site together one lovely September evening, and he had told her, laughing, that it should be his marriage-gift to her. They had planned it together, and now he was carrying it out alone; for Fay owned the moment afterward that she did not know where the new cottages were; she must ask Hugh to take her one day to see them, but perhaps he would rather that she waited until they were finished.