Around lay the undulating park, studded
with trees a dozen times her own age; beyond it, the wood; beyond
the wood, the farms. All this fair and quiet scene was hers. She
nevertheless remained a lonely, repentant, depressed being, who
would have given the greater part of everything she possessed to
ensure the presence and affection of that husband whose very
austerity and phlegm--qualities that had formerly led to the
alienation between them--seemed now to be adorable features in his
character.
She hoped and hoped again, but all to no purpose. Captain
Northbrook did not alter his mind and return. He was quite a
different sort of man from one who altered his mind; that she was at
last despairingly forced to admit. And then she left off hoping,
and settled down to a mechanical routine of existence which in some
measure dulled her grief; but at the expense of all her natural
animation and the sprightly wilfulness which had once charmed those
who knew her, though it was perhaps all the while a factor in the
production of her unhappiness.
To say that her beauty quite departed as the years rolled on would
be to overstate the truth. Time is not a merciful master, as we all
know, and he was not likely to act exceptionally in the case of a
woman who had mental troubles to bear in addition to the ordinary
weight of years. Be this as it may, eleven other winters came and
went, and Laura Northbrook remained the lonely mistress of house and
lands without once hearing of her husband.
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