Presently she turned to her guest, saying courteously, “You must be weary with your journey, Miss Deane:  would you like to retire?”

“Thank you, I should,” was the reply; and thereupon the good-nights were said, and they sought their respective rooms.

“You are not displeased with me, dear?” Zoe asked, lifting her eyes inquiringly to her husband’s face as she stood before their dressing-room fire with his arm about her waist:  “you are looking so very grave.”

“No, dearest, I am not disposed to find fault with you,” he said, softly caressing her hair and cheek with his disengaged hand; “though I should be glad if you could be a trifle more cordial to our uninvited guest.”

“It’s my nature to act just as I feel; and, if there’s a creature on earth I thoroughly detest, it is she!” returned the child-wife with almost passionate vehemence.  “I know she hates me,—­for all her purring manner and sweet tones and words,—­and that she likes nothing better than to make trouble between my husband and me.”

“My dear child, you really must try not to be so uncharitable and suspicious,” Edward said in a slightly reproving tone.  “I do not perceive any such designs or any hypocrisy in her conduct toward you.”

“No:  men are as blind as a bat in their intercourse with such women; never can see through their designs; always take them to be as sweet and amiable as they pretend to be.  It takes a woman to understand her own sex.”

“Maybe so,” he said soothingly; “but we will leave the disagreeable subject for to-night at least, shall we not?”

“Yes; and, oh, I do hope the weather to-morrow will not be such as to afford her an excuse for prolonging her stay!”

“I hope not, indeed, love,” he responded; “but let us resolve, that, if it does, we will try to bear the infliction patiently, and give our self-invited guest no right to accuse us of a lack of hospitality toward her.  Let us not forget or disobey the Bible injunction, to ’use hospitality one to another without grudging.’”

“I’ll try not to.  I’ll be as good to her as I can, without feeling that I am acting insincerely.”

“And that is all I ask, love.  Your perfect freedom from any thing approaching to deceit is one of your greatest charms, in your husband’s eyes,” he said, tenderly caressing her.  “It would, I am sure, be quite impossible for me to love a wife in whose absolute truth and sincerity I had not entire confidence.”

“And you do love me, your foolish, faulty little wife?” she said, in a tone that was a mixture of assertion and inquiry, while her lovely eyes gazed searchingly into his.

“Dearly, dearly, my sweet!” he said, smiling fondly down upon her.  “And now to bed, lest these bright eyes and rosy cheeks should lose something of their brilliance and beauty.”

“Suppose they should,” she said, turning slightly pale, as with sudden pain.  “O Ned! if I live, I must some day grow old and gray and wrinkled, my eyes dim and sunken:  shall you love me then, darling?”