The family solicitor went down to Winiston House occasionally, but Lord Arleigh never.  The few who met him after his marriage found him strangely altered.  Even his face had changed; the frank, honest, open look that had once seemed to defy and challenge and meet the whole world had died away; he looked now like a man with a secret to keep—­a secret that had taken his youth from him, that had taken the light from his life, that hod shadowed his eyes, drawn hard lines of care round his lips, wrinkled his face, taken the music from his voice, and made of him a changed and altered, a sad, unhappy man.

There were one or two intimate friends—­friends who had known him in his youth—­who ventured to ask what this secret was, who appealed to him frankly to make his trouble known, telling him that sorrow shared was sorrow lightened; but with a sad smile he only raised his head and answered that his sorrow was one of which he could not speak.  Sometimes a kindly woman who had known him as boy and man—­one with daughters, and sons of her own—­would ask him what was the nature of his sorrow.  He would never tell.

“I cannot explain,” he would reply.

Society tried hard to penetrate the mystery.  Some said that Lady Arleigh was insane, and that he had not discovered it until the afternoon of his wedding-day.  Others said that she had a fierce temper, and that he was unaware of it until they were traveling homeward.  These were the most innocent rumors; others were more scandalous.  It was said that he had discovered some great crime that she had committed.  Few such stories; Lord Arleigh, they declared, was not the man to make so terrible a mistake.

Then, after a time, all the sensation and wonder died away, society accepted the fact that Lord Arleigh was unhappily married and had separated from his wife.

He went abroad, and then returned home, sojourning at quiet watering places where he thought his story and himself would be unknown.  Afterward he went to Normandy, and tried to lose the remembrance of his troubles in his search after the picturesque.  But, when he had done everything that he could do to relieve his distress of mind, he owned to himself that he was a most miserable man.

Chapter XXXI.

A year and a half bad passed, and Lord Arleigh was still, as it were, out of the world.  It was the end of April, a spring fresh and beautiful.  His heart had turned to Beechgrove, where the violets were springing and the young larches were budding; but he could not go thither—­the picture-gallery was a haunted spot to him—­and London he could endure.  The fashionable intelligence told him that the Duke and Duchess of Hazlewood had arrived for the season, that they had had their magnificent mansion refurnished, and that the beautiful duchess intended to startle all London by the splendor and variety of her entertainments.

He said to himself that it would be impossible for him to remain in town without seeing them—­and see them of his own free will he never would again.