And on an
impulse she bent down and whispered some words to him, blushing as
she had blushed in her maiden days.
He replied by a faint wan smile. 'Time was! . . . but that's past!'
he said, 'I must die!'
And die he did, a few days later, as the sun was going down behind
the garden-wall. Her harshness seemed to come trebly home to her
then, and she remorsefully exclaimed against herself in secret and
alone. Her one desire now was to erect some tribute to his memory,
without its being recognized as her handiwork. In the completion of
this scheme there arrived a few months later a handsome stained-
glass window for the church; and when it was unpacked and in course
of erection Lord Icenway strolled into the building with his wife.
'"Erected to his memory by his grieving widow,"' he said, reading
the legend on the glass. 'I didn't know that he had a wife; I've
never seen her.'
'Oh yes, you must have, Icenway; only you forget,' replied his lady
blandly. 'But she didn't live with him, and was seldom seen
visiting him, because there were differences between them; which, as
is usually the case, makes her all the more sorry now.'
'And go ruining herself by this expensive ruby-and-azure glass-
design.'
'She is not poor, they say.'
As Lord Icenway grew older he became crustier and crustier, and
whenever he set eyes on his wife's boy by her other husband he would
burst out morosely, saying,
''Tis a very odd thing, my lady, that you could oblige your first
husband, and couldn't oblige me.
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