During all these movements the dowager had a difficult game to play.  It was unbecoming her to encourage the strife, and it was against her wishes to suppress it; she therefore moralized with the peer, and frowned upon her daughter.

The viscount listened to her truisms with the attention of a boy who is told by a drunken father how wicked it is to love liquor, and heeded them about as much; while Kate, mistress at all events of two thousand a year, minded her mother’s frowns as little as she regarded her smiles; both were indifferent to her.

A few days after the ladies left Lisbon, the viscount proceeded to Italy in company with the repudiated wife of a British naval officer; and if Kate was not guilty of an offence of equal magnitude, it was more owing to her mother’s present vigilance than to her previous care.

The presence of Mrs. Wilson was a great source of consolation to Emily in the absence of her husband; and as their longer abode in town was useless, the countess declining to be presented without the earl, the whole family decided upon a return into Northamptonshire.

The deanery had been furnished by order of Pendennyss immediately on his marriage; and its mistress hastened to take possession of her new dwelling.  The amusement and occupation of this movement, the planning of little improvements, her various duties under her increased responsibilities, kept Emily from dwelling unduly upon the danger of her husband.  She sought out amongst the first objects of her bounty the venerable peasant whose loss had been formerly supplied by Pendennyss on his first visit to B——­, after the death of his father.  There might not have been the usual discrimination and temporal usefulness in this instance which generally accompanied her benevolent acts; but it was associated with the image of her husband, and it could excite no surprise in Mrs. Wilson, although it did in Marian, to see her sister driving two or three times a week to relieve the necessities of a man who appeared actually to be in want of nothing.

Sir Edward was again amongst those he loved, and his hospitable board was once more surrounded with the faces of his friends and neighbors.  The good-natured Mr. Haughton was always a welcome guest at the hall, and met, soon after their return, the collected family of the baronet, at a dinner given by the latter to his children and one or two of his most intimate neighbors—­

“My Lady Pendennyss,” cried Mr. Haughton, in the course of the afternoon, “I have news from the earl, which I know it will do your heart good to hear.”

Emily smiled at the prospect of hearing in any manner of her husband, although she internally questioned the probability of Mr. Haughton’s knowing anything of his movements, of which her daily letters did not apprise her.

“Will you favor me with the particulars of your intelligence, sir?” said the countess.

“He has arrived safe with his regiment near Brussels; heard it from a neighbor’s son who saw him enter the house occupied by Wellington, while he was standing in the crowd without, waiting to get a peep at the duke.”