"Do you remember the day we came home from our honeymoon, Conrad," she said to her husband, as he sat by her in the dusk one evening, sad and silent, "when there was no carriage to meet us, and we had to come home in a fly? It was an omen, was it not?"
"An omen of what, dearest?"
"That all things were not to go well with us in our married life; that we were not to be quite happy."
"Have you not been happy, Pamela? I have tried honestly to do my duty to you."
"I know you have, Conrad. You have been all goodness; I always have said so to Violet—and to everyone. But I have had my cares. I felt that I was too old for you. That has preyed upon my mind."
"Was that reasonable, Pamela, when I have never felt it?"
"Perhaps not at first; and even if you had felt the disparity in our ages you would have been too generous to let me perceive the change in your feelings. But I should have grown an old woman while you were still a young man. It would have been too dreadful. Indeed, dear, it is better as it is. Providence is very good to me."
"Providence is not very good to me, in taking you from me," said the Captain, with a touch of bitterness.
It seemed to him passing selfish in his wife to be so resigned to leaving life, and so oblivious of the fact that her income died with her, and that he was to be left out in the cold. One evening, however, when they were sitting alone together, this fact presented itself suddenly to her mind.
"You will lose the Abbey House when I am gone, Conrad."