For many days and nights Drusilla bore this state of things with exceeding patience and cheerfulness; always accepting his excuses for leaving her in the morning, and always having the lighted windows, the warm drawing-room, the bright fire and the hot supper to welcome him at night. But ah! worship him as she would, she was but a soul encased in flesh and blood, and her health and spirits from loneliness and late hours, long continued, began to suffer. There was another cause, too, for the poor child’s failing strength, which had her husband known it, should have appealed strongly to his tenderness. But to do him justice in this particular, he did not know it any more than his wife did. She became nervous and irritable, and she wondered what could ail her, to make her so unlike her old self. She tried very hard first to overcome her nervous irritability, then to keep it from annoying him.
After he would leave her each day she would begin to occupy herself diligently, so that her spirits might not droop. She inspected every portion of her house from roof to cellar, and kept all in perfect order. She did a great deal of needle-work, she read many books, she painted some pictures, and she perfected herself in some of the most difficult pieces of music. So at first she managed to get through her lonely days.
When the day’s work was done, and the sky grew dark, and she knew that a long, lonely night was before her, she would have a bright fire lighted in the drawing-room and an exquisite little supper planned out for her husband.
And then, when bed time came, in her kindness of heart she would send her servants to rest, and she would sit alone by the fire, reading and watching until his return. Sometimes, in the loneliness of the place, and of the hour, the stillness would grow almost awful to her, and she would feel that she must speak to some human creature, or go mad, and she would be tempted to go and call Pina up to sit with her. But there again her compassion came in and saved her servant from being disturbed. And so, rather than inconvenience another, she would sit on alone “through the dead waste and middle of the night,” until she became so nervous as to dread to hear the sound of her own low breathing, or to see the reflection of her own scared face in the glass.
But then how welcome the sound of his horse’s feet, which her listening ears could hear in the deep silence even when he was riding along the open road before he turned into the wood.
Then in a moment all was changed. The flush of joy chased the paleness from her cheeks; the light of love beamed from her eye; and she was ready to welcome him with her happy face.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE SORROWS OF THE YOUNG WIFE.
Yet for all this, let him stand
In my thoughts, untouched by blame,
Could he help it, if my hand