No one but Hugh knew how often he had yielded to the temptation to drown his inward miseries in pernicious drugs; how in those solitary vigils, while his innocent child-wife was sleeping peacefully like an infant, his half-maddened brain conjured up delirious fancies that seemed to people the dark library with haunting faces.
But he never meant to harm himself really; he would say in his sober daylight reflections he was only so very wretched. Margaret’s influence had always kept him pure, and he was not the man to find pleasure in any dissipation.
No, he would not harm himself; but he wanted more to do. If he could represent his county, for example; but he had lost his seat last election to his neighbor Colonel Dacre! If he could travel; if Fay would only spare him! And then he shook his head as he thought of his unborn child.
“You look so ill, Hugh,” Fay would say with tears in her eyes when he came up to wish her good-bye, “I wish you would stay with me a little.”
But Hugh would only give a forced laugh, and say that his “Wee Wifie was becoming more fanciful than ever, and that he should not know what to do with her if she went on like this;” and then, kissing her hastily, and unloosening the little hands from his neck, he would go out of the room pretending to whistle.
But one evening, when they were together in the library, he fell asleep while she was talking to him, and looked so strange and flushed that Fay got frightened and tried to wake him.
“Come, Hugh,” she said, softly, “it is eleven o’clock, and I can not leave you like this, and I am so tired and sleepy, dear;” and she knelt down and put her hand under his head, and stroked back the hair from his hot forehead. But Hugh only muttered something inaudibly, and turned his face away.
And Fay, watching him anxiously, felt her heart sink with some undefined fear, and presently rang for his valet.
“Saville,” she said, as the man entered the room, “I do not know what is the matter with Sir Hugh to-night, he sleeps so heavily and looks so strange. If it were not so late, and I were sure that he would not mind it, I would send for Doctor Martin.”
“Nonsense,” exclaimed her husband, drowsily, for this threat of sending for the doctor had roused him effectually, and he managed to sit up and look at them.