Lady Mitford paused in her perusal of the letter at this point.
"Cuthbert Farleigh!" she repeated; "surely it must be the same--it must be poor papa's old pupil; how very odd, if it should be! If he had ever mentioned me before him at Knockholt, he would have remembered me."
Her thoughts strayed back to her childhood and her old home, and she sat absorbed in a reverie.
"How thoughtful he is for me!" she said to herself softly; "how truly considerate! I will obey him in this and in everything. I will make this young lady's acquaintance-not just yet, but later, when I am more composed."
And then she thought how delightful it would be to talk with Helen about Laurence; to hear from her all the particulars of his life at Knockholt; to make all those researches and studies which have such an ineffable attraction for loving hearts. There could be nothing wrong in this; men and angels might scrutinize her feelings towards Laurence Alsager, and find nothing to blame.
There was little more in the letter, which concluded with an expression of the warmest regard.
Lady Mitford felt happier for the receipt of this parting note from Sir Laurence. It seemed to decrease her loneliness--to surround her with an atmosphere of protection. Georgie had never associated much with women in her father's secluded parish. The inhabitants had been chiefly of the lower classes; and since she had emerged from the gushing schoolroom period, she had had none of those intimacies which make up so great a part of the happiness of young womanhood. Perhaps she had concentrated her affections in the object who had proved so unworthy all the more obstinately, and had lavished them upon him all the more unrestrainedly, because she had none of the lesser claimants for them.
She looked forward now with almost girlish pleasure to making Helen's acquaintance and winning her affections, as she determined she would try to do; and she was surprised at herself as she felt her spirits rising, and recognized in herself more energy and hopefulness than she had felt for a long time.
Time slipped away, weighted though it was with care, and brought no change in Sir Charles Mitford's evil life. The husband and wife rarely met now; and when they did, their casual association was distressing to Lady Mitford, and embarrassing to him. Their wealth, the magnitude and style of their establishment, and the routine of life among persons in their position, afforded them facilities for a complete and tacit estrangement, such as the pressure of narrow circumstances would have rendered impossible. They went their separate ways, and were more strange and distant to each other than the merest surface acquaintances. Lady Mitford was, as it was natural to suppose she would be, the last person to hear particulars of her husband's conduct; but she watched him as closely as her limited opportunities permitted. For some time she had observed that he seemed restless and unhappy, and that the moroseness and discontent, which had been early indications of his relapse from his improved condition, were trying to the household, and, on rare occasions when she had to encounter them, distressing to her. He had no air of triumph now; he had no assured complacency of manner; these were gone, and in their place were the symptoms of suffering, of incertitude, of disappointment.
"I suppose she is treating him unkindly," Lady Mitford thought. "It must be something concerning her which is distressing him; he does not care about anything else. He is so infatuated with her now, that I verily believe, when he drinks to the frightful excess he sometimes does, it is to stupify himself between the time he leaves her and the time he sees her again. Poor fellow! poor Charley!"