her.  The men and women, once as alive as her everyday self, now gazing down at her from their picture frames sometimes made her heart beat as if she stood in the presence of things eerie.  Their strange, rich, ugly, or beautiful garments, their stolid or fervid, ugly or beautiful, faces, seemed to demand something of her; at least she had just enough imagination to feel somewhat as if they did.  Walderhurst was very kind to her, but she was afraid she might bore him by the exceeding ignorance of her questions about people whom he had known from his childhood as his own kith and kin.  It was not unlikely that one might have become so familiar with a man in armour or a woman in a farthingale that questions connected with them might seem silly.  Persons whose ancestors had always gazed intimately at them from walls might not unnaturally forget that there were other people to whom they might wear only the far-away aspect of numbers in catalogues of the Academy, or exhibitions of that order.

There was a very interesting catalogue of the Palstrey pictures, and Emily found and studied it with deep interest.  She cherished a touching secret desire to know what might be discoverable concerning the women who had been Marchionesses of Walderhurst before.  None of them but herself, she gathered, had come to their husbands from bed-sitting rooms in obscure streets.  There had been noble Hyrsts in the reign of Henry I., and the period since then elapsed had afforded time for numerous bridals.  Lady Walderhurst was overcome at moments by her reflections upon what lay behind and before her, but not being a complex person or of fervid imagination, she was spared by nature the fevers of complex emotions.

In fact, after a few weeks had passed she came out of her dream and found her happiness enduring and endurable.  Each day’s awakening was a delight to her, and would probably be so to the end of her existence, absolutely because she was so sane and uncomplex a creature.  To be deftly assisted in her dressing by Jane Cupp, and to know that each morning she might be fittingly and becomingly attired without anxiety as to where her next gown was to come from, was a lovely thing.  To enjoy the silent, perfect workings of the great household, to drive herself or be driven, to walk and read, to loiter through walled gardens and hothouses at will,—­such things to a healthy woman with an unobscured power of enjoyment were luxuries which could not pall.

Walderhust found her an actual addition to his comfort.  She was never in the way.  She seemed to have discovered the trick of coming and going undisturbingly.  She was docile and affectionate, but not in the least sentimental.  He had known men whose first years of marriage, not to speak of the first months, had been rendered unbearable by the fact that their wives were constantly demanding or expecting the expression of sentiments which unsentimental males had not at their fingers’ ends.  So the men had been