"You say that Jessie is not well?" said Roy, shortly.
There were limits to his fortitude. He could not hear other lips tell what would be Jessie's action were an abhorrent marriage forced upon her by conscience or honor.
"In my estimation, she is very far"—arms again divergent—"very far from well, even taking into consideration the provocatives to languor you alluded to, just now. Furthermore—and again let me beg you to receive this intimation in the spirit in which I offer it!—furthermore, she is homesick for Dundee and her sister. I adverted to them casually to assure myself that my views on this point were correct, and her eyes filled again directly.
"'I had hoped to see Euna this month,' she said, 'but the change in the college vacation, abolishing the intermediate, and making one long term instead of two short ones, has prevented it.'
"But when I remarked—'I wish Eunice could pay you a visit, were it only from Saturday to Monday!' the loyal wife (such a stanch advocate as you have in her, Mr. Fordham!), took alarm.
"'Indeed, Cousin Jane, no one could take kinder care of me than Roy does!' she said, warmly. 'He spoils and pets me beyond reason, and when he is in the house, I desire no other society.'
"'But my precious girl!' I remonstrated; 'he cannot be with you all the time?'
"I wish you had seen the smile with which she replied—'Ah! but I have the memory of his goodness to live on in his absence!'
"She is true and fond, Mr. Fordham! Nevertheless, she does need change of air and scene. Her mother pined herself into an untimely grave in her longing for a sight of her old home and the faces of beloved ones."
Roy was silent; his eyes downcast, his lips whitening with the pressure this story had brought to bear upon him. It was not so much the consciousness that, in sending his wife away, he would rob his life of repression and self-denial of the little sunshine left to it, as the thought that she was sickening of his companionship; could not live and grow in his shadow. This was the naked truth, disguise it as she might from her cousin; deny it to herself as she probably did. In every point of Mrs. Baxter's description, he recognized this terrible sense of bondage, crushing spirit and life; heard, even in her tribute to his loving watchfulness over her health and bodily comfort, the plaint embodied in the poem he had learned by heart: