“I have thought since we married, Maude, that you did not much care for me.”

Maude made no immediate answer.  She was looking out straight before her, her head on his shoulder, and Lord Hartledon saw that tears were glistening in her eyes.

“Yes, I do,” she said at length; and as she spoke she felt very conscious that she was caring for him.  His gentle kindness, his many attractions were beginning to tell upon her heart; and a vision of the possible future, when she should love him, crossed her then and there as she stood.  Lord Hartledon bent his face, and let it rest on hers.

“We shall be happy yet, Val; and I will be as good as gold.  To begin with, we will leave London at once.  I ought not to remain, and I know you have not liked it all along.  It would have been better to wait until next year, when we could have had our own house; only I was impatient.  I felt proud of being married; of being your wife—­I did indeed, Val—­and I was in a fever to be amidst my world of friends.  And there’s a real confession!” she concluded, laughing.

“Any more?” he asked, laughing with her.

“I don’t remember any more just now.  Which day shall we go?  You shall manage things for me now:  I won’t be wilful again.  Shall the servants go on first to Hartledon, or with us?”

“To Hartledon!” exclaimed Val.  “Is it to Hartledon you think of going?”

“Of course it is,” she said, standing up and looking at him in surprise.  “Where else should I go?”

“I thought you wished to go to Germany!”

“And so I did; but that would not do now.”

“Then let us go to the seaside,” he rather eagerly said.  “Somewhere in England.”

“No, I would rather go to Hartledon.  In one’s own home rest and comfort can be insured; and I believe I require them.  Don’t you wish to go there?” she added, watching his perplexed face.

“No, I don’t.  The truth is, I cannot go to Hartledon.”

“Is it because you do not care to face the Ashtons?  I see!  You would like to have this business settled first.”

Lord Hartledon hardly heard the words, as he stood leaning against the open casement, gazing into the dark and misty past.  No man ever shrank from a prison as he shrank from Hartledon.

“I cannot leave London at all just yet.  Thomas Carr is remaining here for me, when he ought to be on circuit, and I must stay with him.  I wish you would go anywhere else, rather than to Hartledon.”

The tone was so painfully earnest, that a momentary suspicion crossed her of his having some other motive.  It passed away almost as it arose, and she accused him of being unreasonable.

Unreasonable it did appear to be.  “If you have any real reason to urge against Hartledon, tell it me,” she said.  But he mentioned none—­save that it was his “wish” not to go.

And Lady Hartledon, rather piqued, gave the necessary orders on the following day for the removal.  No further confidential converse, or approach to it, took place between her and her husband; but up to the last moment she thought he would relent and accompany her.  Nothing of the sort.  He was anxious for her every comfort on the journey, and saw her off himself:  nothing more.