To love, to honour, to obey:--many times daily she repeated to herself that threefold vow, and hitherto the first article had most occupied her striving heart.

But she must not neglect the second; perhaps it came first in natural order.
At the gate Richard nodded to her kindly.
'Good-bye.

Be a good girl.' What was it that caused a painful flutter at her heart as he spoke so?
She did not answer, but watched him for a few moments as he walked away.
Did _he_ love _her_?
The question which she had not asked herself for a long time came of that heart-tremor.

She had been living so unnatural a life for a newly wedded woman, a life in which the intellect and the moral faculties held morbid predominance.

'Be a good girl.' How was it that the simple phrase touched her to emotion quite different in kind from any thing she had known since her marriage, more deeply than any enthusiasm, as with a comfort more sacred than any she had known in prayer?
As she turned to go back to the house a dizziness affected her eyes; she had to stand still for a moment.