It was a new thing to have those strong arms performing gentle offices for her. Fay used to thank him gratefully with one of her meek, beautiful looks, but she seldom said anything—his kindness had come too late to the poor child, who felt that her heart was slowly breaking with its hopeless love. For who would be content with the mirage when they are thirsting for the pure water? Or who would be satisfied with the meted grain and the measured ounce when they have given their all in all?
Those looks used to haunt Hugh as he rode through the Singleton lanes; he used to puzzle over them in an odd ruminative fashion.
He remembered once that he had been in at the death of a doe—where, or in what country he could not remember; but she had been overtaken with her fawn, and one of the huntsmen had dispatched her with his knife.
Hugh had stood by and shuddered at the dumb look of anguish in the wild deer-eyes, as with a sobbing breath the poor creature breathed its last, its helpless fawn licking its red wounds. Hugh had not been able to forget that look for a long time; and now it recurred to his memory, and he could not tell why Fay’s eyes reminded him so much of the dying doe’s—it was an absurd morbid idea. And then he touched his black mare a little smartly, and tried to efface the recollection by a rousing gallop. But, do what he would, he could not get it out of his mind that his Wee Wifie was sadly altered; she was not the same Fay whose little tripping feet had raced Nero and Pierre along the galleries with that ringing laugh. This was a tired Fay who rarely spoke and never laughed—who seemed to care for nothing but her baby.
Hugh used to tell her so sometimes, with an inexplicable feeling of jealousy that rather surprised him; but Fay did not understand him.
“What does it matter for whom I care?” she would say to herself. “I must love my own baby.” And then she would think bitterly that Hugh seemed to like her better now that she had ceased to vex him with her childish demonstrations. “I am getting very dignified,” she thought, “and very quiet; and I think this pleases him. Do old people feel like this, I wonder, when all their life is ended, and they have such feeble, aching limbs? Ah, no; I do not believe they suffer at all. But now I seem as though I can never rest for my longing that Hugh may love me, and tell me so before I die.” And so she would press on in her sad plaintive little way.
No wonder Sir Hugh marveled at her, so silent of tongue, so grave of look—such an altered Wee Wifie; but all the conclusion at which he arrived was that the baby had been too much for her, and that, when the summer heat was over, she would grow strong again. And Fay never contradicted him.
And by and by, when the days grew a little cooler, Fay began to creep about the garden a little, and call herself well. Hugh drove her out once or twice in her pony-carriage; but she saw he did not like it, and begged him to let her go alone—such reluctant courtesies gave her no pleasure. But presently Erle came for a brief visit, and was her ready escort, and after that she really began to mend.
CHAPTER XXXI.
FAY’S MISTAKE.
She loves with love that can not tire,