"He has seemingly. But why should this wind be troubling him? I was just thinking how refreshing it was."
"Ah, but your husband is right there. This south wind is an enemy we dread, it is baleful in its effects, I assure you. When it first blows on one it does seem refreshing, but the very next moment one begins to feel its bad influence. It is like a gust of hot damp air blown over marshes, penetrating to one's joints and marrows."
"Alfred evidently resents it," returned Hester. "I fear it will blow away all the good effects of his change. I wonder what can have made him hurry back so soon," she added, with a sigh she repressed at once and turned to her friend, saying, "How can I thank you for all that has made this time so pleasant to me? I shall never forget these days."
The tears sprang to her eyes as she clasped her friend's hand. "I feel as if I were leaving Paradise for the thorns and thistles of the wilderness," she murmured; and in this remark she laid bare more of her heart than she had ever done, even to her trusted friend, who now looked at her with keen concern.
"But I mustn't put it like that," she added. "Poor Alfred needs me. I must go back strong and cheerful!"
Presently Mrs. Fellowes stood in the verandah with a sorrowful face watching her departing guest.
"You don't mean to say the fellow has come back already like a bad shilling and requisitioned that wife of his a whole week earlier than we reckoned on!" exclaimed the colonel with vexation, when he returned from his morning's work and heard of Hester's sudden summons to Clive's Road. "That is a blow! Why, she should have sent back the landau empty and told him he still owed her a week's release from his presence!"
"Though you say that, Joe, you know it would not be like the faithful wife she is to take things into her own hands like that," returned his wife. "But somehow my heart misgives me about her. I feel as if she were going down into a valley of suffering. But she never complains, and we must not probe her secret sorrow."
Meanwhile the pair of swift Walers had borne their mistress to her destination.
"How ill you look, Alfred!" she exclaimed, when her husband met her on the verandah steps. "What is the matter? Had you a bad passage? Surely the south wind can't affect you so much when you've only just arrived!"