Maude took no notice.

There happened to be some water standing on a table, and the dowager poured out a tumblerful and drank it, though not accustomed to the beverage.  Untying her bonnet-strings she sat down, a little calmer.

“Perhaps you’ll explain this at your convenience, Maude.”

“There is nothing to explain,” was the answer.  “What I told you was the truth.  The action has been entered by the Ashtons.”

“And I tell you that the action has not.”

“I assure you that it has,” returned Maude.  “I told you of the evening we first had notice of it, and the damages claimed; do you think I invented that, or went to sleep and dreamt it?  If Val has gone down once to that Temple about it, he has gone fifty times.  He would not go for pleasure.”

The countess-dowager sat fanning herself quietly:  for her daughter’s words were gaining ground.

“There’s a mistake somewhere, Maude, and it is on your side and not mine.  I’ll lay my life that no action has been entered by Dr. Ashton.  The man spoke the truth; I can read the truth when I see it as well as anyone:  his face flushed with pain and anger at such a thing being said of him.  It may not be difficult to explain this contradiction.”

“Do you think not?” returned Maude, her indifference exciting the listener to anger.

“I should say Hartledon is deceiving you.  If any action is entered against him at all, it isn’t that sort of action; or perhaps the young lady is not Miss Ashton, but some other; he’s just the kind of man to be drawn into promising marriage to a dozen or two.  Very clever of him to palm you off with this tale:  a man may get into five hundred troubles not convenient to disclose to his wife.”

Except that Lady Hartledon’s cheek flushed a little, she made no answer; she held firmly—­at least she thought she held firmly—­to her own side of the case.  Her mother, on the contrary, adopted the new view, and dismissed it from her thoughts accordingly.

Maude went to church in the evening, sitting alone in the great pew, pale and quiet.  Anne Ashton was also alone; and the two whilom rivals, the triumphant and the rejected, could survey each other to their heart’s content.

Not very triumphant was Maude’s feeling.  Strange perhaps to say, the suggestion of the old dowager, like instilled poison, was making its way into her very veins.  Her thoughts had been busy with the matter ever since.  One positive conviction lay in her heart—­that Dr. Ashton, now reading the first lesson before her, for he was taking the whole of the service that evening, could not, under any circumstance, be guilty of a false assertion or subterfuge.  One solution of the difficulty presented itself to her—­that her mother, in her irascibility, had misunderstood the Rector; and yet that was improbable.  As Maude half sat, half lay back in the pew, for the faint feeling was especially upon her that evening, she thought she would give a great deal to set the matter at rest.