When he turned back from the tossing waves and the summer sun she was gone.  He looked across the beach—­there was no sign of her.  She was gone; and he avowed to himself that it would be wonderful if ever in this world he saw her again.  She did not remain at Tintagel; to do so would be useless, hopeless.  She saw it now.  She had hoped against hope:  she had said to herself that in a year and a half he would surely have altered his mind—­he would have found now how hard it was to live alone, to live without love—­he would have found that there was something dearer in the world than family pride—­he would have discovered that love outweighed everything else.  Then she saw that her anticipations were all wrong—­he preferred his dead ancestors to his living wife.

She went back to Winiston House and took up the dreary round of life again.  She might have made her lot more endurable and happier, she might have traveled, have sought society and amusement; but she had no heart for any of these things.  She had spent the year and a half of her lonely married life in profound study, thinking to herself that if he should claim her he would be pleased to find her yet more accomplished and educated.  She was indefatigable, and it was all for him.

Now that she was going back, she was without this mainspring of hope—­her old studies and pursuits wearied her.  To what end and for what purpose had been all her study, all her hard work?  He would never know of her proficiency; and she would not care to study for any other object than to please him.

“What am I to do with my life,” she moaned.  “Mariana in the moated grange was not more to be pitied than I.”

How often the words occurred to her: 

        “The day is dreary,
      ‘He cometh not,’ she said: 
    She said, ’I am aweary, aweary,
      would that I were dead.’”

It was one of the strangest, dullest, saddest lives that human being ever led.  That she wearied of it was no wonder.  She was tired of the sorrow, the suffering, the despair—­so tired that after a time she fell ill; and then she lay longing for death.

Chapter XXXII.

It was a glorious September, and the Scottish moors looked as they had not looked for years; the heather grew in rich profusion, the grouse were plentiful.  The prospects for sportsmen were excellent.

Not knowing what else to do, Lord Arleigh resolved to go to Scotland for the shooting; there was a sort of savage satisfaction in the idea of living so many weeks alone, without on-lookers, where he could be dull if he liked without comment—­where he could lie for hours together on the heather looking up at the blue skies, and puzzling over the problem of his life—­where, when the fit of despair seized him, he could indulge in it, and no one wonder at him.  He hired a shooting-lodge called Glaburn.  In his present state of mind it seemed to him to be