Perhaps her freshness and innocence had bewitched him; there was something quaint and original about her naïve remarks. The disappointed man might have found her brightness refreshing—her very contrast to Margaret might have been her attraction in his eyes. Well, Raby supposed that it was all right; no doubt she was an idolized little woman. Hugh seemed to keep her in a glass case; nothing was allowed to trouble her. She will be thoroughly spoiled by this sort of injudicious fondness, thought Raby, perfectly unconscious how far he was from grasping the truth.
It was Margaret who began to feel doubtful; her womanly intuition perceived that there was something wanting; she thought Lady Redmond spoke as though she were often alone.
“I suppose you are never dull?” she asked, gently.
“Oh, no,” returned Fay, with another gay little laugh. “Of course we have plenty of callers; just now the snow has kept them away, but then I have had our cousin Erle. Oh, he is such a pleasant companion, he is so good-natured and full of fun. I shall miss him dreadfully when he goes back to London next week.”
“You will have to be content with your husband’s society,” observed Raby, smiling. It was a pity that neither he nor Margaret saw the lovely look on Fay’s face that answered this; it would have spoken to them of the underlying depths of tenderness that there was in that young heart.
“Oh, yes,” she returned, simply, “but then, you see, Hugh, I mean my husband, is so extremely busy, he never comes in until luncheon has been waiting ever so long, and very often he has to go out again afterward. Sometimes, when I know he has gone to Pierrepoint, I ride over there to meet him. He used to ride and drive with me very often when we first came home,” she continued, sorrowfully, “but now he has no time. Oh, he does far too much, every one tells him so; he is so tired in the evening that he is hardly fit for anything, and yet he will sit up so late.”
Raby’s sightless eyes seemed to turn involuntarily to the window where Margaret sat, her pale face bending still lower over her work. This last speech of Lady Redmond’s perplexed him still more. The Hugh who had courted Margaret had been a good-natured idler in his eyes; he had heard him talk about his shooting and fishing with something like enthusiasm; he had been eager to tell the number of heads of grouse he had bagged, or to describe the exact weight of the salmon he had taken last year in Scotland, but Raby had never looked upon him as an active man of business. If this were true, Hugh’s wife must spend many lonely hours, but there was no discontented chord in her bright voice.
“I feel dreadfully as though I want to help him,” continued Fay. “I can not bear to see him so tired. I asked him to let me go and visit some of the poor people who belong to us—he is building new cottages for them, because he says that they are living in tumble-down places only fit for pigs—but he will not hear of it; he says I am too young, and that he can not allow me to go into such dirty places, and yet he goes himself, though he says it makes him feel quite ill.”
Margaret’s head drooped still lower, her eyes were full of tears; he had not forgotten then! he had promised to build those cottages when she had begged him to do so. She remembered they had chosen the site together one lovely September evening, and he had told her, laughing, that it should be his marriage-gift to her. They had planned it together, and now he was carrying it out alone; for Fay owned the moment afterward that she did not know where the new cottages were; she must ask Hugh to take her one day to see them, but perhaps he would rather that she waited until they were finished.
Margaret was beginning to feel strangely troubled; a dim but unerring instinct told her that Fay was more petted than beloved. It was evident that Hugh lived his own life separate from her, submerged in his own interests and pursuits, and her heart grew very pitiful over Fay as she realized this. If she could only meet Hugh face to face; if she could only speak to him. She felt instinctively that things were not altogether right with him. Why did he not try to guide and train the childish nature that was so dependent on him? why did he repress all her longings to be useful to him, and to take her share of the duties of life? Surely her extreme youth was no excuse, she was not too young to be his wife. Margaret told herself sadly that here he was in error, that he was not acting up to his responsibilities, to leave this child so much alone.