Meanwhile it was said by those who were supposed to be well-informed that a mass of evidence was accumulating against Lord Maulevrier.  The India House, it was rumoured, was busy with the secret investigation of his case, prior to that public inquiry which was to come on during the next session.  His private fortune would be made answerable for his misdemeanours—­his life, said the alarmists, might pay the penalty of his treason.  On all sides it was agreed that the case against Lord Maulevrier was black as Erebus; and still Lady Maulevrier looked society in the face with an unshaken courage, and was ready with smiles and gracious words for all comers.

But now came a harder trial, which was to receive the man who had disgraced her, lowered her pride to the dust, degraded the name she bore.  She had married him, not loving him—­nay, plucking another love out of her heart in order that she might give herself to him.  She had married him for position and fortune; and now by his follies, by his extravagance, and by that greed of gold which is inevitable in the spendthrift and profligate, he had gone near to cheat her out of both name and fortune.  Yet she so commanded herself as to receive him with a friendly air when he arrived at the Dolphin, on a dull grey autumn afternoon, after she had waited for him nearly a fortnight.

James Steadman ushered in his lordship, a frail attenuated looking figure, of middle height, wrapped in a furred cloak, yet shivering, a pale sickly face, light auburn whiskers, light blue eyes, full and large, but with no intellectual power in them.  Lady Maulevrier was sitting by the fire, in a melancholy attitude, with the Blenheim spaniel on her lap.  Her son was at Hastings with his nurses.  She had nothing nearer and dearer than the spaniel.

She rose and went over to her husband, and let him kiss her.  It would have been too much to say that she kissed him; but she submitted her lips unresistingly to his, and then they sat down on opposite sides of the hearth.

‘A wretched afternoon,’ said his lordship, shivering, and drawing his chair closer to the fire.  Steadman had taken away his fur-lined cloak.  ’I had really underrated the disagreeableness of the English climate.  It is abominable!’

‘To-day is not a fair sample,’ answered her ladyship, trying to be cheerful; ‘we have had some pleasant autumn days.’

‘I detest autumn!’ exclaimed Lord Maulevrier. ’a season of dead leaves, damp, and dreariness.  I should like to get away to Montpellier or Nice as soon as we can.’

Her ladyship gave him a scathing look, half-scornful, half-incredulous.

‘You surely would not dream of leaving the country,’ she said, ’under present circumstances.  So long as you are here to answer all charges no one will interfere with your liberty; but if you were to cross the Channel—­’

‘My slanderers might insinuate that I was running away,’ interrupted Maulevrier, ’although the very fact of my return ought to prove to every one that I am able to meet and face this cabal.’