As it was just this where which tormented the folk with the sense of mystery and made them eager for news, the father’s meagre explanation—­which, in point of fact, was no explanation at all—­was not found very satisfactory, and a few hard words were said of Mr. Dundas, his reserve to the world being taken for the same thing as indifference to his daughter, and resented as an offence.  But for the third time in his life Sebastian was found capable of maintaining this impenetrable reserve.  Pepita’s true status in her own country—­madame’s suspicious debts and those damaging letters from London—­Leam’s hiding-place:  he had had strength enough to keep his own counsel about the first two unbroken, and now he betrayed no more about this last.  It may as well be said that for this he had sufficient reason.  Leam, who had confessed her crime, and announced her intention of flight and of hiding herself where no one should find her again, had not told him more than these bare bones of the story.  And he did not care to know more.  The skeleton was horrible enough as it stood:  he was by no means inclined to clothe it with the flesh of detail, still less to follow his erring child to her place of exile.  He was content that she should be blotted out.  It was the sole reparation that she could make.

This sudden disappearance ended the foreign tour which had been Josephine’s sweetest anticipations of the honeymoon, for Mr. Dundas turned back for home at once, intending to put up Ford House for sale and leave the place for ever.  He was ashamed to live at North Aston, he said, after Leam’s extraordinary conduct, her shameful, shameless esclandre, which—­said Josephine to her own people, weeping—­she supposed was due to her, the poor little thing not liking her for a stepmother.

“Though, indeed, she need not have been afraid,” said the good creature effusively, “for I had intended to be kindness itself to the poor dear girl.”

And when she said this, Mrs. Harrowby who never failed an opportunity for moral cautery, remarked dryly, “In all probability it is as well as it is, Josephine.  You would have been very uncomfortable with her, and would have been sure to have spoiled her.  And, as Adelaide Birkett always says, very sensibly, she is odd enough already.  She need not be made more so.”

Maria threw out a doubt as to whether Mr. Dundas had heard from Leam at all.  It was not like Sebastian to be so close, she said; but Josephine assured her that he had, and bridled a little at the vapory insinuation that Sebastian was not perfect.  She detailed the whole circumstance with all the facts fully fringed and feathered.  He had received the letter just as they were preparing to go to the Louvre, but he had not shown it to her, and she had not asked to see it.  She saw, though, that he was much agitated when he read it, but he had put it in his pocket, and when she looked for it it was not there.  All that he had said was, “Leam has left home, Josephine, and we must go back at once.”  Of course she had not asked questions, she said with a pleasant little assumption of wifely submission.  Her search in her husband’s pockets was only what might have been expected from the average woman, but the wifely submission was special.