"He's still sleeping. Dost want to see him?"
"Oh, no, let him sleep," said Gwen; "he will awake some day." And her eyes, small and glittering as a snake's, followed Gwladys as she busied herself with her household duties.
She tried to throw off the fascination of Gwen's look, but wherever she went she felt oppressed by that basilisk stare.
"What makes thee so pale and downcast?" Gwen said at last. "Everyone thought that when thou wert the wife of Hugh Morgan thou wouldst be the brightest and happiest in Mwntseison; but instead of that thou look'st like a white storm-driven pigeon. Come out in the rain with me; 'twill suit thee better than all these comforts. Has Hugh Morgan begun to repent of his bargain yet?"
"What dost mean?" said Madlen, standing before her with arms akimbo, "coming here, indeed, to insult the Mishtress before she's had a bit or a sup inside her? Get thee out, Gwen, if thee hasn't pleasanter words in thy tongue."
"Oh, I am going," said Gwen, standing up and backing gradually towards the doorway, with her eyes still fixed on Gwladys, who felt frightened and trembling, "out in the wind and rain. 'Tis a brâf morning." And with one of her long uncanny peals of laughter, she left the house, and Madlen bolted the door.
"There," she said, with satisfaction, "let her go to her wind and rain. Tan i marw![[1]] I'm afraid of her."
When Hugh came down, he entered upon the subject of his intended retirement from business.
"'Twill be better for thee, merch i," he said, "than being so much alone. Perhaps I have been wrong to leave thee here all day to fret thyself. I will try not to be in the way of the household work, Gwladys."
"Oh, Hugh," said the girl, her voice trembling with emotion, "thou hast not left me to fret. Thou hast filled my life with kindness; thou hast been everything to me—husband, friend, brother,—and I will try—oh, I will try!—to be all I can to thee. Have patience with me, Hugh." And, with timid attempts at reconciliation, she surrounded him with little nameless attentions, piling his plate with the frizzled ham, cutting thin slices of bread and butter from the long barley loaf, and stooping herself to tie his shoe strings; but Hugh's thoughts were absent, and he took no notice of the little tendernesses. The cloud was on his brow and the dark shadow of suspicion in his heart, and, though his words were as kind, perhaps more so than ever, there was an absence of the loving look and the warm embrace, which cut his young wife to the quick. After he had left the house, she flung herself down in the rush chair in the chimney corner, and, with her hands clasped listlessly on her lap, she mused long and sorrowfully, making no answer to Madlen's frequent allusions to the storm.