SECRET CARE.

From that hour Lord Hartledon was a changed man.  He went about as one who has some awful fear upon him, starting at shadows.  That his manner was inexplicable, even allowing that he had some great crime on his conscience, a looker-on had not failed to observe.  He was very tender with his wife; far more so than he had been at all; anxious, as it seemed, to indulge her every fancy, gratify her every whim.  But when it came to going into society with her, then he hesitated; he would and he wouldn’t, reminding Maude of his old vacillation, which indeed had seemed to have been laid aside for ever.  It was as though he appeared not to know what to do; what he ought to do; his own wish or inclination having no part in it.

“Why won’t you go with me?” she said to him angrily one day that he had retracted his assent at the last moment.  “Is it that you care so much for Anne Ashton, that you don’t care to be seen with me?”

“Oh, Maude!  If you knew how little Anne Ashton is in my thoughts now!  When by chance I do think of her, it is to be thankful I did not marry her,” he added, in a tone of self-communing.

Maude laughed a light laugh.  “This movement of theirs is putting you out of conceit of your old love, Val.”

“What movement?” he rejoined; and he would not have asked the question had his thoughts not gone wool-gathering.

“You are dreaming, Val.  The action.”

“Ah, yes, to be sure.”

“Have you heard yet what damages they claim?”

He shook his head.  “You promised not to speak of this, Maude; even to me.”

“Who is to help speaking of it, when you allow it to take your ease away?  I never in my life saw any one so changed as you are.  I wish the thing were over and done with, though it left you a few thousand pounds the poorer. Will you accompany me to this dinner to-day?  I am sick of appearing alone and making excuses for you.”

“I wish I knew what to do for the best—­what my course ought to be!” thought Hartledon within his conscience.  “I can’t bear to be seen with her in public.  When I face people with her on my arm, it seems as if they must know what sort of man she, in her unconsciousness, is leaning upon.”

“I’ll go with you to-day, Maude, as you press it.  I was to have seen Mr. Carr, but can send down to him.”

“Then don’t be five minutes dressing:  it is time we went.”

She heard him despatch a footman to the Temple with a message that he should not be at Mr. Carr’s chambers that evening; and she lay back in her chair, waiting for him in her dinner-dress of black and white.  They were in mourning still for his brother.  Lord Hartledon had not left it off, and Maude had loved him too well to grumble at the delay.

She had grown tolerant in regard to the intimacy with Mr. Carr.  That her husband should escape as soon and as favourably as possible out of the dilemma in which he was plunged, she naturally wished; that he should require legal advice and assistance to accomplish it, was only reasonable, and therefore she tolerated the visits of Mr. Carr.  She had even gone so far one evening as to send tea in to them when he and Val were closeted together.