thousand threads that form the woof of the human mind,—all this had occurred to Milly when her mother-in-law announced Mr. Wareham’s intended visit. He came in with Mr. Leslie a few minutes afterwards. Never, perhaps, was there a greater contrast than that which existed between the two men. Mr. Leslie was tall and spare, with strongly marked features, and a kindly expression in his eyes which was at variance with the reserve of his manner. Mr. Wareham represented the opposite type. He was stout and tall: his face fair and handsome: his manners almost affectedly frank and open-hearted.
Poor Milly! Her eyes met Mr. Wareham’s, and he knew in that one hurried glance that her mother had left the secret in her keeping. He thought he had never seen her look so pretty since she had been Mr. Leslie’s wife. Some strange sort of fascination drew her eyes to his, again and again, and he felt an intense degree of triumph in the idea that he might have it in his power to revenge himself for the genuine look of dislike which had seemed to sink into his very soul when he declared his love for her. A change was working in him which he made no effort to check. He had no longer to ask her for her love or her pity. It might be soon; it might be in the years to come: some day she should feel herself in his power.
If Milly’s greeting was more shy and nervous than usual, her mother-in-law atoned for it with a grim suavity which was not always the characteristic of her manner. Mrs. Leslie had one of those natures which never feel antipathies to those with whom they are brought in contact, and who are equally far from yielding to the attractions which are recognised by others. It might form a matter of speculation as to how far such people are independent of the troubles incident to a livelier sympathy, or how, in avoiding such chances, they debar themselves from some of the purest pleasures of humanity. They grow up around us, and we cease to look for signs of interest from them: like trees on which we never hope to find fruit.
Mr. Wareham had some peculiarities,—an occasional freedom of manner amongst them which passed unheeded by Mrs. Leslie. Not so with her son. It was often a subject of regret to him that his chief supporter was a man whom somehow he felt he could not respect, although he had no definite cause of complaint against him; but Mr. Leslie was of an unsuspicious nature in spite of his reserve, and Wareham was too much in earnest from this time forth to risk the betrayal of his purpose by carelessness in Leslie’s presence. And so the three sat and talked of the schools, and the charities, and the savings bank, and debated whether the chapel walls would require white-washing in the following half-year, and wondered if Mr. Larkins’s bequest would be free from legacy duty. And Milly sat and listened and felt as if a web were weaving round her, and that, struggle as she might, she would never be free again.
CHAPTER III.
We can all remember some hours in our past life when the light has seemed brighter, the shadow darker, the joy fuller, and the pain sharper than at other periods. But we have probably passed from inexperience to maturity, and we have learnt to doubt whether any repetition of the circumstances would awaken the sensations which now stand out with such terrible distinctness. In after times, when little children were playing round Milly’s knees, and she thanked the Great Giver of Happiness for the full measure she enjoyed, she looked back to the months that succeeded her mother’s death with a kind of wonder. Milly, perhaps, had never heard it said that nothing is ever wholly forgotten: she only felt as if she should remember to her dying day all she went through at this time, to the exclusion of the rest of her life.
Wareham was more of a Sybarite than any other man in Trowchester. He lived at the back of his house in order to avoid the din of the market-place, and rose late in the day; so that Milly contrived, when necessity carried her into his nearer neighbourhood, it should be at an hour in the morning when his most important client would have failed to rouse him from his bed. But she could not avoid meeting him at her mother-in-law’s. Mrs. Leslie enjoyed nothing better in her cold deliberate way than entertaining her son and daughter, Mr. Wareham, and two or three of Mr. Leslie’s congregation in the evening.
It was not a sociable meeting. The visitors clung tenaciously to their tea-cups, as if they dreaded the interval that must elapse before politeness would permit them to go away; and Mrs. Leslie’s thoughts were perpetually wandering back to the early days of her marriage, when the social gatherings of her sect had been of the severest possible character, strangely contrasting with the lukewarm demonstrations of religious feeling amongst her son’s friends. Mr. Leslie invariably declined to avail himself of the opportunities his mother threw in his way on these occasions of expounding the particular views she loved to hear dwelt upon. In her heart she accused him of undue tolerance of other people’s tenets, and of some small amount of moral cowardice when he failed to express himself strongly in defence of the opinions of his childhood. It was on such evenings that all Milly’s care and watchfulness were required to keep Mr. Wareham from her side. Gossips had begun to say that young Mrs. Leslie had grown strangely talkative with slight acquaintances, and her husband often looked round in astonishment when she seemed to be asking questions at random. Once or twice, when he heard her laugh with half a dozen people around her, he found himself wishing he had seen tears running down her cheeks instead; something in her voice so smote upon his heart. But she was trying hard to be cheerful, to take an interest in the small affairs of their community, to be on good terms with her mother-in-law, and to hold herself aloof from Mr. Wareham, without giving him cause for offence. With such weak weapons as these was she fighting off the evil day.
It came at last. One Tuesday morning,—day, week, month, year, how they clung to Milly’s
