“I have secured the house you write about and send by this post for Hedges and a few of the rest from Hartledon.  It won’t accommodate a large establishment I can tell you and you’ll be disappointed when you come over to take possession which you can do when you choose.  Val was a fool for letting his town house in the spring but of course we know he is one and must put up with it.  Whatever you do, don’t consult him about any earthly thing take your own way, he never did have much of a will and you must let him have none for the future.  You’ve got a splendid chance can spend what you like and rule in society and he’ll subside into a tame spaniel.

“Maude if you are such an idiot I’ll shake you.  Find you’ve made a dredful mistake?—­can’t bear your husband?—­keep thinking always of Edward?  A child might write such utter rubish but not you, what does it matter whether one’s husband is liked or disliked, provided he gives one position and wealth?  Go to Amiens and stop with Jane for a week and see her plight and then grumble at your own, you are an idiot.

“I’m quite glad about your taking this town-house, and shall enter into posession myself as soon as the servants are up, and await you. Bob’s quite well and joins to-day and of course gives up his lodgings, which have been wretchedly confined and uncomfortable and where I should have gone to but for this move of yours I don’t know.  Mind you bring me over a Parisian bonnet or two or some articles of that sort.  I’m nearly in rags, Kirton’s as undutiful as he can be but it’s that wife of his.

  “Your affectionate mother,

  “C.  Kirton.”

The letter will give you some guide to the policy of Maude Hartledon since her marriage.  She did find she had made a mistake.  She cared no more for her husband now than she had cared for him before; and it was a positive fact that she despised him for walking so tamely into the snare laid for him by herself and her mother.  Nevertheless she triumphed; he had made her a peeress, and she did care for that; she cared also for the broad lands of Hartledon.  That she was unwise in assuming her own will so promptly, with little regard to consulting his, she might yet discover.

At Versailles that day—­to which place they went in accordance with Maude’s wish—­there occurred a rencontre which Lord Hartledon would willingly have gone to the very ends of the earth to avoid.  It happened to be rather full for Versailles; many of the visitors in Paris apparently having taken it into their minds to go; indeed, Maude’s wish was induced by the fact that some of her acquaintances in the gay capital were going also.