Matters, however, mended for Ida when the confinement of living in public was changed for the comparative freedom of being alone with Arthur on the voyage to India. There we must leave them for a time. Arthur quite recovered from his irritability, and forgot its cause; and Ida feeling rather humbled, strove the more earnestly after this standard of Arthur's, whose existence she had penetrated, but of which she could form no distinct conception. She was very genuine and well-intentioned, but sorely puzzled.

WE have no

CHAPTER VII.

INDIA.

intention of following Ida through the details of the first year and a half of her Indian life. The limits of our story would not admit of it, and we do not think there would be very much of interest to record. She was getting her growth in a good many ways and will interest us more when the when the process is more advanced, but we must just indicate the direction it look.

When they reached India in the autumn of 1861, the cloud that had fallen upon Ida in the days of her honeymoon had passed away, and she was again good and happywe use the word good advisedly, for it was rather the goodness of a child who vexes no one and does as she is bid, than any more independent excellence. She had certainly

become more childish and less bright through the early experiences of her married life. Arthur was less content with this quiet goodness of hers than he ought to have been,—not that he loved her less, but that it struck him as strange how much more childish she now was as a wife, than she had seemed to be a few months before as a maiden. Then she had appeared to him the impersonation of bright young freshness, and her wilfulness and her independent ways had seemed to him to be indices to point out to him what manner of woman she would make. It is true that at times nature would show itself in flashes, in which he could recognise the girl he had tried to win, and who in the winning seemed to have so much altered. After these flashes one of two things happened: either she became reserved, took to her books, and seemed to think a good deal, and was certainly out of heart; or with an effort that he could see, she took up the attitude of a penitent

child, was good and simple and rather colourless for a while.

Certainly such flashes became less and less frequent, giving to Arthur a mingled feeling of contentment and hopelessness about her. Did she love him? he would sometimes ask himself, never to find a very satisfactory answer. If he was vexed with her she was miserable, if he was kind she was happy-equally clear; but he looked in vain for any sign of feeling to match his

own.

He remembered that the twenty years of difference in their ages must go for something, felt it indeed much more now than he had done at first; and hoped that it would matter less as time passed. But in the meanwhile, instead of the companion and friend he was dimly learning that he wanted during this year and a half,—learning it because he wanted love, not because he wanted character, he had an affectionate simple girl, whose one effort seemed to be

to keep herself in tune to him, and who did. it so simply and yet withal with such determination refused what she liked, and chose what she knew he liked, till he, bewildered, asked himself, "Am I a tyrant? What does this mean?"

When in India he had his work to do. His post gave him incessant occupation, and left him but little time for home; so these reflections only dawned on him by degrees as Ida grew, or did not grow, beside him out of child into woman. Physically the year and a half had made a considerable difference. She grew two good inches, and felt rather humbled by the fact that all her best dresses were definitely too short for her.

The change of country, the peculiarities of Indian society, were only a little additional bewilderment where all was new and strange. Had she been able to see her way in her married life, had she not been crushed by the difficulties of her task,-namely to make Arthur happy and be a good wife, as a