“I 'm very certain of it, Lucy,” said the other, with greater firmness than before. “The thing we call love in married life has an existence only a little beyond that of the bouquet you carried to the wedding-breakfast; and it would be unreasonable in a woman to expect it, but she might fairly ask for courtesy and respect, and you would be amazed how churlish even gentlemen can become about expending these graces in their own families.”
Lucy was both shocked and astonished at what she heard, and the grave tone in which the words were uttered surprised her most of all.
Mrs. Sewell had by this time taken off her bonnet and shawl, and, pushing back her luxuriant hair from her forehead, looked as though suffering from headache, for her brows were contracted, and the orbits around her eyes dark and purple-looking.
“You are not quite well to-day,” said Lucy, as she sat down on the sofa beside her, and took her hand.
“About as well as I ever am,” said she, sighing; and then, as if suddenly recollecting herself, added, “India makes such an inroad on health and strength! No buoyancy of temperament ever resisted that fatal climate. You would n't believe it, Lucy, but I was once famed for high spirits.”
“I can well believe it.”
“It was, however, very long ago. I was little more than a child at the time—that is, I was about fourteen or fifteen—when I left England, to which I returned in my twentieth year. I went back very soon afterwards to nurse my poor father, and be married.”
The depth of sadness in which she spoke the last words made the silence that followed intensely sad and gloomy.
“Yes,” said she, with a deep melancholy smile, “papa called me madcap. Oh dear, if our fathers and mothers could look back from that eternity they have gone to, and see how the traits they traced in our childhood have saddened and sobered down into sternest features, would they recognize us as their own? I don't look like a madcap now, Lucy, do I?” As she said this, her eyes swam in tears, and her lip trembled convulsively. Then standing hastily up, she drew nigh the table, and leaned over to look at the drawing at which Lucy had been engaged.
“What!” cried she, with almost a shriek,—“what is this? Whose portrait is this? Tell me at once; who is it?”