CHAPTER VI.

Before Mr. Lyon’s visit to Woodbine Lodge, Mr. Markland rarely went to the city.  Now, scarcely a day passed that he did not order his carriage immediately after breakfast; and he rarely came back until nightfall.  “Some matters of business,” he would answer to the questions of his family; but he gave no intimation as to the nature of the business, and evidently did not care to be inquired of too closely.

“What’s come over Edward?  He isn’t the same man that he was a month ago,” said Miss Grace, as she stood in the portico, beside Mrs. Markland, one morning, looking after the carriage which was bearing her brother off to the city.  There had been a hurried parting with Mr. Markland, who seemed more absorbed than usual in his own thoughts.

Mrs. Markland sighed faintly, but made no answer.

“I wonder what takes him off to town, post-haste, every day?”

“Business, I suppose,” was the half-absent remark.

“Business!  What kind of business, I’d like to know?”

“Edward has not informed me as to that,” quietly answered Mrs. Markland.

“Indeed!” a little querulously.  “Why don’t you ask him?”

“I am not over-anxious on the subject.  If he has any thing to confide to me, he will do it in his own good time.”

“Oh! you’re too patient.”  The tone and manner of Miss Grace showed that she, at least, was not overstocked with the virtue.

“Why should I be impatient?”

“Why?  Goodness me!  Do you suppose that if I had a husband—­and it’s a blessed thing for me that I haven’t—­that I’d see him going off, day after day, with lips sealed like an oyster, and remain as patient as a pet lamb tied with a blue ribbon?  Oh dear! no!  Grace Markland’s made of warmer stuff than that.  I like people who talk right out. I always do.  Then you know where to place them.  But Edward always had a hidden way about him.”

“Oh, no, Grace; I will not agree to that for a moment,” said Mrs. Markland.

“Won’t you, indeed!  I’m his sister, and ought to know something about him.”

“And I’m his wife,” was the gentle response to this.

“I know you are, and a deal too good for him—­the provoking man!” said Grace, in her off-hand way, drawing her arm within that of Mrs. Markland, to whom she was strongly attached.  “And that’s what riles me up so.”

“Why, you’re in a strange humour, Grace!  Edward has done nothing at which I can complain.”

“He hasn’t, indeed?”

“No.”

“I’d like to know what he means by posting off to the city every day for a week at a stretch, and never so much as breathing to his wife the purpose of his visits?”

“Business.  He said that business required his attention.”

“What business?”

“As to that, he did not think it necessary to advise me.  Men do not always explain business matters to their wives.  One-half would not understand what they were talking about, and the other half would take little interest in the subject.”