“Thank you,” she laughed.  “I have not been Lady Maude this two months.”

“I beg your pardon, Lady Hartledon.”

“Now don’t pretend to be offended, Val.  I have only saved you trouble.”

“Maude,” he said, rallying his good humour, “it was not right.  Let us—­for Heaven’s sake let us begin as we mean to go on:  our interests must be one, not separate.  Why did you not tell me you wished to return to London, and allow me to see after an abode for us?  It would have been the proper way.”

“Well, the truth is, I saw you did not want to go; you kept holding back from it; and if I had spoken you would have shillyshallied over it until the season was over.  Every one I know is in London now.”

The waiter entered with the fresh chocolate, and retired again.  Lord Hartledon was standing at the window then.  His wife went up to him, and stole her hand within his arm.

“I’m sorry if I have offended you, Val.  It’s no great matter to have done.”

“I think it was, Maude.  However—­don’t act for yourself in future; let me know your wishes.  I do not think you have expressed a wish, or half a wish, since our marriage, but I have felt a pleasure in gratifying it.”

“You good old fellow!  But I am given to having a will of my own, and to act independently.  I’m like mamma in that.  Val, we will start to-morrow:  have you any orders for the servants?  I can transmit them through mamma.”

“I have no orders.  This is your expedition, Maude, not mine; and, I assure you, I feel like a man in utter darkness in regard to it.  Allow me to see your mother’s letter.”

Lady Hartledon had put the letter safely into her pocket.

“I would rather not, Percival:  it contains a few private words to myself, and mamma has always an objection to her letters being shown.  I’ll read you all necessary particulars.  You must let me have some money to-day.”

“How much?” asked he, from between his compressed lips.

“Oceans.  I owe for millinery and things.  And, Val, I’ll go to Versailles this afternoon, if you like.  I want to see some of the rooms again.”

“Very well,” he answered.

She poured out some chocolate, took it hurriedly, and quitted the room, leaving her husband in a disheartening reverie.  That Lady Hartledon and Maude Kirton were two very distinct persons he had discovered already; the one had been all gentleness and childlike suavity, the other was positive, extravagant, and self-willed; the one had made a pretence of loving him beyond all other things in life, the other was making very little show of loving him at all, or of concealing her indifference.  Lord Hartledon was not the only husband who has been disagreeably astonished by a similar metamorphosis.

The following was the letter of the countess-dowager: 

  “Darling Maude,