"But your friends?" I ventured to suggest, feeling my way, and not quite relishing either the form or tone of her utterance.
"I have none but my husband."
"Then your husband?" I persisted.
"Ah!" she said mournfully, "he will miss me, no doubt, for a while. But it must be a weight off him, for I have been a sufferer so long!"
At this moment I heard a heavy, hasty step in the passage; the next, the room door opened, and in came, in hot haste, wiping his red face, a burly man, clumsy and active, with an umbrella in his hand, followed by a great, lumbering Newfoundland dog.
"Down, Polyphemus!" he said to the dog, which crept under a chair; while he, taking no notice of my presence, hurried up to his wife.
"My love! my little dove!" he said eagerly: "did you think I had forsaken you to the cruel elements?"
"No, Alcibiades," she answered, with a sweet little drawl; "but you do not observe that I am not the only lady in the room." Then, turning to me, "This is my husband, Mr. Cromwell," she said. "I cannot tell him your name."
"I am Mrs. Percivale," I returned, almost mechanically, for the gentleman's two names had run together and were sounding in my head: Alcibiades Cromwell! How could such a conjunction have taken place without the intervention of Charles Dickens?
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said Mr. Cromwell, bowing. "Permit my anxiety about my poor wife to cover my rudeness. I had climbed the other side of the glen before I saw the fog; and it is no such easy matter to get up and down these hills of yours. I am greatly obliged to you for your hospitality. You have doubtless saved her life; for she is a frail flower, shrinking from the least breath of cold."