"Live for others. Live openly," he answered slowly, looking up beyond her— into futurity—with a kindly light in his deep gray eyes, a something of hope, of confidence, of encouragement expressed in his strong plain face.
Angelica bowed her head. The familiar phrases had a new significance now, and diverted the stream of her reflections into another channel. She folded her hands on her lap and sat motionless once more, with her eyes fixed on the ground.
Dr. Galbraith was a specialist in mental maladies. He knew exactly how much to say, and when to say it. If a text were as much as the patient required or could bear, he never made the mistake of preaching a sermon upon it in addition; and so for the third time he took up his pen and returned to his work, leaving Angelica engaged in sober thought, and happily quiescent.
CHAPTER III.
It was late when at last she went home, but the drive of many miles in the fresh evening air helped to revive her. She had dreaded the return. The place seemed empty to her imagination, and strange and chill, as a south room in which we have sat and been glad with friends all the bright morning does, if by chance we return alone when the sun has departed.
And the place was dismal. There was no one to welcome her. Even her well-trained servants were out of the way for once, and she felt her heart sink as she crossed the deserted hall to go upstairs, and saw long lines of doors, shut for the most part, or, if open, showing big rooms beyond silent and tenantless. As she passed the library she had noticed her husband's chair half turned from his writing table, just as he had left it, probably, that very morning. It seemed a long time since then. He must have come to his journey's end—ages ago. She wondered if he had felt it as dreary on arriving as she did now, and an unaccustomed wish to be with him, in order to make things pleasanter for him, here obtruded itself. It was one of the least selfish thoughts she had had lately, and this was also one of the very few occasions on which his leaving her had not occasioned her a sense of liberty restored, which was the one unmixed delight she had hitherto experienced.
Her mind was racked by inconsistencies, but she did not perceive it herself, otherwise she must also have observed that she was running up the whole gamut of her past moods and experiences, only to find how unsatisfactory in its unstableness and futility was each. And she might still further have perceived how fatal the habit of living from day to day without any settled purpose, a mere cork of a creature on the waters of life at the mercy of every current of impulse, is to that permanent content to which a steady effort to do right at all events whatever else we may not do, and right only whatever happens, alone gives rise, making thereof a sure foundation of quiet happiness out of which countless pleasures, known only to those who possess it, spring perceptibly—or to which they come like butterflies to summer flowers, enriching them with their beauty and vitality while they stay, and leaving them none the poorer when they depart, but rather, it may be, gainers, by the fertilizing memories which remain.
Angelica had gone to her room to dress for the evening as usual. She had no idea of shirking the ordinary routine of daily life because her mind was perturbed. But that duty over, she descended to the drawing room to wait until dinner should be announced, and so found herself alone with her own thoughts once more. She went to one of the fireplaces, and stood with her hands folded on the edge of the mantelpiece, and her forehead resting on them, looking down at the flowers and foliage plants which concealed the grate.
"You cannot go on like this, you know," she mentally ejaculated, apostrophising herself.
Then she became conscious of a great sense of loneliness, the kind of loneliness of the heart from which there is no escape except in the presence of one who knows what the trouble is and can sympathize. She had been half inclined to confide in Dr. Galbraith, and now she regretted she had not, but presently, passing into a contrary mood, she was glad; what good could he have done? And as for her husband, an empty house was better than a bad tenant. This was before dinner was announced; but afterward, at dinner, sitting in solitary state with the servants behind her, and a book to keep her in countenance, she made a grievance of his absence, and then sighed for such company as the seven more who were entertained in that house which was swept and garnished for another purpose, she fancied, but she could not recollect what, and it was too much trouble to try—so her thoughts rambled on uncontrolled—only she believed they were merry, and that was what she was not; but she would be very soon in spite of everything—in pursuance of which resolve she wrote several notes after dinner, asking people she knew well enough to kindly dispense with the ceremony of a long invitation and come and lunch with her to-morrow; and she dispatched a groom on horseback with the notes that there might be no delay. She even thought of making up a house party, but here her interest and energy flagged, and she left the execution of that project till next day.