still a building of whose beauty, within and without, the eye never tires.

Christian stood watching it, for the hundredth time, with that vague
sensation of pleasure which she felt at sight of all lovely things,
whether of nature or art. That, at least, had never left her; she hoped it
never might. It was something to hold by, though all the world slid by
like a dream. Very dreamy her life felt still, though she had tried to
make it more real and natural by resuming some of her old ways, and
especially her morning walk, before the nine o'clock breakfast at the
Lodge.

She had made a faint protest in favor of an earlier hour than nine, and
begged that the children might come down to breakfast; she craved so
to have the little faces about the table. But Miss Gascoigne had said
solemnly that "my poor dear sister always breakfasted at nine, and
never allowed her children to breakfast any where but in the nursery."
And that reference, which was made many times a day, invariably
silenced Christian.

She had now been married exactly four weeks, but it seemed like four
years--four ages--as if she hardly remembered the time when she was
Christian Oakley. Yet now and then, in a dim sort of way, her old
identity returned to her, as it does to those who, after a great crisis and
uprooting of all life, submit, some in despair, some in humble, patience,
to the inevitable.

This good time, this lucid interval, so to speak, usually came to her in
the morning, when she took her early walk in the familiar places; for to
Christian familiarity only made things more dear. Already she was
beginning to find her own nooks, and to go about her own ways in