“It was an awful death!” shivered Mrs. Gum.  “And without cause too; for the child was not hurt after all.  Isn’t my lord dreadfully cut up, Mary?”

“I think so; he’s very quiet and subdued.  But he has seemed full of sorrow for a long while, as if he had some dreadful care upon him.  I don’t think he and his wife were very happy together,” added Mirrable.  “My lord’s likely to make Hartledon his chief residence now, I fancy, for—­My gracious! what’s that?”

A crash as if a whole battery of crockery had come down inside the house.  A moment of staring consternation ensued, and nervous Mrs. Gum looked ready to faint.  The two women disappeared indoors, and Mirrable turned homewards at a brisk pace.  But she was not to go on without an interruption.  Pike’s head suddenly appeared above the hurdles, and he began inquiring after her health.  “Toothache gone?” asked he.

“Yes,” she said, answering straightforwardly in her surprise.  “How did you know I had toothache?” It was not the first time by several he had thus accosted her; and to give her her due, she was always civil to him.  Perhaps she feared to be otherwise.

“I heard of it.  And so my Lord Hartledon’s like a man with some dreadful care upon him!” he went on.  “What is the care?”

“You have been eavesdropping!” she angrily exclaimed.

“Not a bit of it.  I was seated under the hedge with my pipe, and you three women began talking.  I didn’t tell you to.  Well, what’s his lordship’s care?”

“Just mind your own business, and his lordship will mind his,” she retorted.  “You’ll get interfered with in a way you won’t like, Pike, one of these days, unless you mend your manners.”

“A great care on him,” nodded Pike to himself, looking after her, as she walked off in her anger.  “A great care! I know.  One of these fine days, my lord, I may be asking you questions about it on my own score.  I might long before this, but for—­”

The sentence broke off abruptly, and ended with a growl at things in general.  Mr. Pike was evidently not in a genial mood.

Mirrable reached home to find the countess-dowager in a state more easily imagined than described.  Some sprite, favourable to the peace of Hartledon, had been writing confidentially from Ireland regarding Kirton and his doings.  That her eldest son was about to steal a march on her and marry again seemed almost indisputably clear; and the miserable dowager, dancing her war-dance and uttering reproaches, was repacking her boxes in haste.  Those boxes, which she had fondly hoped would never again leave Hartledon, unless it might be for sojourns in Park Lane!  She was going back to Ireland to mount guard, and prevent any such escapade.  Only in September had she quitted him—­and then had been as nearly ejected as a son could eject his mother with any decency—­and had taken the Isle of Wight on her way to Hartledon.  The son who lived in the Isle of Wight had espoused a widow twice his own age, with eleven hundred a year, and a house and carriage; so that he had a home:  which the countess-dowager sometimes remembered.