Helbeck put down his pipe with alacrity. Laura ran for her hat and cape,
and they went out together.

A number of small improvements both inside and outside the house had been
recently inaugurated to please the coming bride. Already Helbeck
realised--and not without a secret chafing--the restraints that would
soon be laid upon the almsgiving of Bannisdale. A man who marries, who
may have children, can no longer deal with his money as he pleases.
Meanwhile he found his reward in Laura's half-reluctant pleasure. She was
at once full of eagerness and full of a proud shyness. No bride less
grasping or more sensitive could have been imagined. She loved the old
house and would fain repair its hurts. But her wild nature, at the
moment, asked, in this at least, to be commanded, not to command. To be
the managing wife of an obedient husband was the last thing that her
imagination coveted. So that when any change in the garden, any repair in
the house, was in progress, she would hover round Helbeck, half cold,
half eager, now only showing a fraction of her mind, and now flashing out
into a word or look that for Helbeck turned the whole business into pure
joy. Day by day, indeed, amid all jars and misgivings, the once solitary
master of Bannisdale was becoming better acquainted with that mere
pleasantness of a woman's company which is not passion, but its best
friend. In the case of those women whom nature marks for love, it is a
company full of incident, full of surprise. Certainly Helbeck found it
so.

A week or more had now passed since the quarrel over the picture. Not a
word upon the subject had passed between them since. As for Laura, she
took pains not to look at the picture--to forget its existence. It was as
though she felt some hidden link between herself and it--as though some
superstitious feeling attached to it in her mind.