“Well, remember, my dear, if ever you are at the end of your tether, you must come to me.”
Letty gave her a glance of despair, then she rose and said:
“I shall have to go down at once, for Hugo always expects me to be in the drawing-room when he is there—he likes me to sing the new musical comedies. He says my voice sends him to sleep.”
“My dear, if I were you, for once I would disappoint your Saul! I do not intend to go downstairs again to-night, and I shall leave you immediately after breakfast to-morrow. Mr. Blagdon was outrageously rude to you at dinner—apparently he imagined that he can make you miserable with impunity, that you will ignore his insults, and entertain him in the drawing-room all smiles and songs. Believe me, you are making a fatal mistake; possibly if you had resisted in the first instance, things would never have come to such a pass. You are not his wife, but his doormat!”
Again Mrs. Hesketh had sown a little seed. Letty for once did resist, and the two friends remained together talking until bed-time. Blagdon, finding the drawing-room empty, glared round it, then stalked into the smoking-room, where he smoked cigars and drank whiskies and sodas in solitary state, and a condition of volcanic indignation.
“Of course, the old woman was at the bottom of Letty’s sulks—a damned meddlesome hag!” He rang the bell and said to the footman:
“Tell Mrs. Hesketh’s maid to let her mistress know, that her carriage is ordered to take her home at nine o’clock to-morrow morning.”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE Rev. Adrian Lumley had been ailing for a considerable time; he was no longer able to undertake his parish duties, and compelled to employ a curate. Lately his health had suddenly become so uncertain that his son took three months’ leave, and returned from Egypt. Captain Lumley arrived looking handsome, sunburnt, and cheery, and his sister Frances realised that he was no longer the boy that, as her younger brother, she had always managed, patronised, and coerced. Lancelot had been adjutant of his regiment, and acquired a manner of decision and brevity that was new. He found his father frail, broken-down, and evidently failing fast. For months, the Rector had confined himself to his books and his garden, and now he was a prisoner in his room. Perhaps if the reverend gentleman had not been so completely laid upon the shelf, matters at Sharsley might have been smoothed over, and improved; but, as it was, Blagdon had no one to withstand him; he had parted with any scruples he might possess, and affairs had gone from bad to worse. Except for a few days in the shooting season, he had ceased to live at home. Most of the rooms were closed, servants dismissed, the gardens let, the horses sold. He had heavy expenses elsewhere, and was not disposed to burn the candle at both ends. He had allowed it to be whispered into the ear of society, that his wife was ‘not quite all there.’ Magnified descriptions of her first disastrous dinner-party, her bizarre gowns, her silence and shyness, gave colour to this suggestion,—so said his interested friends; and other people declared that Blagdon was bad,—some even added, mad! Altogether Sharsley was given a wide berth; it was out of the way, more recent topics, quarrels, and scandals arose, and poor young Mrs. Blagdon was comparatively forgotten.