my wife; am I not, Lola?” He turned playfully to her.

“Not quite that,” said she gently, but with no more warmth than
before.

“Practically I am,” he persisted. “She was an heiress, I a ruined
spendthrift, when she married me. Yet she trusted me; and the only
condition she would allow her friends to make was that I should settle
in the country--out of the reach of temptation, you see, Miss
Christie.”

He spoke with some feeling, and looked affectionately at his wife at
the end of this unexpectedly frank confession; but she remained as
impassive as ever.

I could not help feeling rather sorry for Mr. Rayner. He was always
kind and attentive to his wife; but, whether he was in a bright mood,
and tried to make her smile, or silent, and needing to be roused out
of his gravity, she was always the same, limp, nerveless, apathetic,
speaking when necessary in a low soft voice, slowly, with many pauses.
She had a habit of letting the last words of a sentence die away upon
her lips, and then, after a few moments, as if by an effort, she would
say them aloud. I soon grew quite afraid of her, started if I met her
unexpectedly, and felt more restrained in her presence than if she had
been one of those brilliant satirical women who take the color out of
the rest of their sex. Anxious to shake off this strange diffidence,
which was beginning to cast a shadow over my life, I offered to read
to her when my short hours of study with my pupil were over.She accepted my offer, and I went into the drawing-room that very afternoon and read her some chapters of _Adam Bede_, while she sat in a rocking-chair, with a piece of embroidery making slow progress in the thin white fingers. I stopped at the end of each chapter, waiting for the comment which never came, and rather hoping for some little compliment upon my reading, an accomplishment I took pride in. But she only said “Thank you” very gently, and, when I asked her if I should go on, “Yes, if it will not tire you.”

Presently I found out that she was not listening, except for a few minutes at a time, but that she was sitting with her hands in her lap listlessly playing with her embroidery, while her eyes were fixed on the garden outside, with a deep sadness in them which contrasted 

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