The day seemed very long and dreary to Esmeralda after he had gone, and she could have found in her heart to welcome his return by throwing her arms round him; but she restrained herself, and said only, with a smile.
“I suppose London is very hot?”
“Yes,” he said; “very hot.”
He had sat in the smoking-room of the Marlborough nearly all the time—sat and thought of the wife he loved, the woman who was wife to him only in name, and who would never be anything more.
One or two men had approached him with greetings of welcome, but had been frightened away by his grim coldness.
“Trafford doesn’t seem to have been improved by his marriage,” said one. “It’s always the way; the best fellow in the world is spoiled by marrying. You can go as far as you like with women, if you stop short of that.”
Trafford began to hate the prettiness of Deepdale, its rustic garden and the sunny country around it, and when there came a letter from Lilias to Esmeralda inviting them, if they were tired of Deepdale, to Belfayre, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Would you like to go?” asked Esmeralda, as she threw the letter across to him.
He kept his eyes on it long after he had read it.
“It is for you to decide,” he said.