“The vile old hypocrite!” cried the incensed dowager.  “Ten thousand pounds!  Are you sure it is as much as that, Maude?”

“Quite.  Mr. Carr told me the amount.”

“I wonder you encourage that man to your house.”

“It was one of the things I stood out against—­fruitlessly,” was the quiet answer.  “But I believe he means well to me; and I am sure he is doing what he can to serve my husband.  They are often together about this business.”

“Of course Hartledon resists the claim?”

“I don’t know.  I think they are trying to compromise it, so that it shall not come into court.”

“What does Hartledon think of it?”

“It is worrying his life out.  No, mamma, it is not too strong an expression.  He says nothing; but I can see that it is half killing him.  I don’t believe he has slept properly since the news was brought to him.”

“What a simpleton he must be!  And that man will stand up in the pulpit to-morrow and preach of charity!” continued the dowager, turning her animadversions upon Dr. Ashton.  “You are a hypocrite too, Maude, for trying to deceive me.  You and Hartledon are not on good terms; don’t tell me!  He would never have let you come down alone.”

Lady Hartledon would not reply.  She felt vexed with her mother, vexed with her husband, vexed on all sides; and she took refuge in her fatigue and was silent.

The dowager went to church on the following day.  Maude would not go.  The hot anger flushed into her face at the thought of showing herself there for the first time, unaccompanied by her husband:  to Maude’s mind it seemed that she must look to others so very much like a deserted wife.  She comes home alone; he stays in London!  “Ah, why did he not come down only for this one Sunday, and go back again—­if he must have gone?” she thought.

A month or two ago Maude had not cared enough for him to reason like this.  The countess-dowager ensconced herself in a corner of the Hartledon state-pew, and from her blinking eyes looked out upon the Ashtons.  Anne, with her once bright face looking rather wan, her modest demeanour; Mrs. Ashton, so essentially a gentlewoman; the doctor, sensible, clever, charitable, beyond all doubt a good man—­a feeling came over the mind of the sometimes obtuse woman that of all the people before her they looked the least likely to enter on the sort of lawsuit spoken of by Maude.  But never a doubt occurred to her that they had entered on it.

Lady Hartledon remained at home, her prayer-book in her hand.  She was thinking she could steal out to the evening service; it might not be so much noticed then, her being alone.  Listlessly enough she sat, toying with her prayer-book rather than reading it.  She had never pretended to be religious, had not been trained to be so; and reading a prayer-book, when not in church, was quite unusual to her.  But there are seasons in a woman’s life, times when peril is looked forward to, that bring thought even to the most careless nature.  Maude was trying to play at “being good,” and was reading the psalms for the day in an absent fashion, her thoughts elsewhere; and the morning passed on.  The quiet apathy of her present state, compared with the restless fever which had stirred her during her last sojourn at Hartledon, was remarkable.