His wife’s answer was one pleading look, and to burst into tears.

Sir Bale let-go her wrist, which he had held up to this; and placing his hand gently on her shoulder, he said,

“You must not cry, Janet; I have given you no excuse for tears.  I only wished an answer to a very harmless question; and I am sure you would tell me, if by any chance you have lately seen Philip Feltram; he is capable of arranging all that.  No one knows him as I do.  There, you must not cry any more; but tell me truly, has he turned up? is he at Faxwell?”

She denied all this with perfect truth; and after a hesitation of some time, the matter ended.  And as soon as she and he were more themselves, he had something quite different to tell her.

“Sit down, Janet; sit down, and forget that vile picture and all I have been saying.  What I came to tell you, I think you will like; I am sure it will please you.”

And with this little preface he placed his arm about her neck, and kissed her tenderly.  She certainly was pleased; and when his little speech was over, she, smiling, with her tears still wet upon her cheeks, put her arms round her husband’s neck, and in turn kissed him with the ardour of gratitude, kissed him affectionately; again and again thanking him all the time.

It was no great matter, but from Sir Bale Mardykes it was something quite unusual.

Was it a sudden whim?  What was it?  Something had prompted Sir Bale, early in that dark shrewd month of December, to tell his wife that he wished to call together some of his county acquaintances, and to fill his house for a week or so, as near Christmas as she could get them to come.  He wished her sisters—­Lady Haworth (with her husband) and the Dowager Lady Walsingham—­to be invited for an early day, before the coming of the other guests, so that she might enjoy their society for a little time quietly to herself before the less intimate guests should assemble.

Glad was Lady Mardykes to hear the resolve of her husband, and prompt to obey.  She wrote to her sisters to beg them to arrange to come, together, by the tenth or twelfth of the month, which they accordingly arranged to do.  Sir Oliver, it was true, could not be of the party.  A minister of state was drinking the waters at Bath; and Sir Oliver thought it would do him no harm to sip a little also, and his fashionable doctor politely agreed, and “ordered” to those therapeutic springs the knight of the shire, who was “consumedly vexed” to lose the Christmas with that jolly dog, Bale, down at Mardykes Hall.  But a fellow must have a stomach for his Christmas pudding, and politics takes it out of a poor gentleman deucedly; and health’s the first thing, egad!

So Sir Oliver went down to Bath, and I don’t know that he tippled much of the waters, but he did drink the burgundy of that haunt of the ailing; and he had the honour of making a fourth not unfrequently in the secretary of state’s whist-parties.