Had he ceased to love her? No! surely that could not be, for the change which arises in the most inconstant heart is, at least, gradual. George Jernam had changed in a day—in an hour.
Reason upon the subject as she might, the conviction at which Rosamond arrived at last was always the same. She believed that the mysterious change that had arisen in the husband she so fondly loved was a change in the mind itself—a sudden monomania, beyond the influence of the outer world—a wild hallucination of the brain, not to be cured by any ordinary physician.
Believing this, the wife's heart was tortured as she thought of the perils that surrounded her husband's life—perils that were doubly terrible for one whose mind had lost its even balance.
She watched every alteration in the atmosphere, every cloud in the sky, with unspeakable anxiety. As the autumn gave place to winter, as the winds blew loud above the broad expanse of ocean, as the foam-crests of the dark waves rose high, and gleamed white and silvery in the dim twilight, her heart sank with an awful fear for the absent wanderer.
Night and day her prayers arose to heaven—such prayers as only the loving heart of woman breathes for the object of all her thoughts.
While Rosamond occupied the abode which Captain Jernam had chosen for her, River View Cottage was abandoned entirely to the care of Mrs. Mugby and Susan Trott, and the trim house had a desolate look in the dismal autumn days, and the darkening winter twilights, carefully as it was kept by Mrs. Mugby, who aired the rooms, and dusted and polished the furniture every day, as industriously as if she had been certain of the captain's return before night-fall.
"He may come this night, or he may not come for a year," she said to Susan very often, when Miss Trott was a little disposed to neglect some of her duties, in the way of dusting and polishing; "but mark my words, Susan, when he does come, he'll come sudden, without so much as one line of warning, or notice enough to get a bit of dinner ready for him."
The day came at last when the housekeeper was gratified to find that all her dusting and polishing had not been thrown away. Captain Duncombe returned exactly as she had prophesied he would return, without sending either note or message to give warning of his arrival.
He rang the bell one day, and walked into the garden, and from the garden into the house, with the air of a man who had just come home from a morning's walk, much to the astonishment of Susan Trott, who admitted him, and who stared at him with eyes opened to their widest extent, as he strode hurriedly past her.
He went straight into the parlour he had been accustomed to sit in. A fire was burning brightly in the polished steel grate, and everything bore the appearance of extreme comfort.