London and raised her standard in St. James' Square. "It was like old
days," as her husband had said to Ferrars when they met after a long
separation.

Was it like old days? he thought to himself when he was alone. Old days,
when the present had no care, and the future was all hope; when he was
proud, and justly proud, of the public position he had achieved, and of
all the splendid and felicitous circumstances of life that had clustered
round him. He thought of those away, and with whom during the last three
years he had so continuously and intimately lived. And his hired home
that once had been associated only in his mind with exile, imprisonment,
misfortune, almost disgrace, became hallowed by affection, and in the
agony of the suspense which now involved him, and to encounter which he
began to think his diminished nerve unequal, he would have bargained for
the rest of his life to pass undisturbed in that sweet solitude, in the
delights of study and the tranquillity of domestic love.

A little not unamiable weakness this, but it passed off in the morning
like a dream, when Mr. Ferrars heard that Sir Robert had arrived.



CHAPTER XVIII

It was a dark December night when Mr. Ferrars returned to Hurstley. His
wife, accompanied by the gardener with a lantern, met him on the green.
She embraced him, and whispered, "Is it very bad, love? I fear you have
softened it to me?"

"By no means bad, and I told you the truth: not all, for had I, my