Sir Gilbert had spent nearly a week in the Bournemouth villa which he had taken for Lady Hawkesby. The place wearied him, and nothing but a chivalrous sense of the duty he owed to his wife kept him there so long. Lady Hawkesby was a little exacting in some ways; and though she recognised that the judge had a right to go fishing, she disliked his running away without spending a few days with her after the busy season was over, and she was able to leave London. The day of the judge's departure had arrived, and he sat with Lady Hawkesby after luncheon, waiting for the carriage which was to take him to the station.
"You'll see Millicent, of course," said Lady Hawkesby. "Be sure to keep her out of mischief if you can."
"I don't suppose," said Sir Gilbert, "that Millicent can get into any mischief in Ballymoy."
Lady Hawkesby sighed. She distrusted her niece, regarding her as a highly dangerous person who might at any moment create a sensation which would amount to a public scandal.
"I understand," she said, "that the place is twenty miles away from the nearest railway station."
She sighed again. She was a little uncertain as to whether she ought to find comfort or fresh cause of anxiety in the remoteness of Ballymoy from civilisation. On the one hand, scandals of a literary kind—and Lady Hawkesby did not suspect Miss King of giving occasion for anything worse—are unlikely in the wilds of Connacht. On the other hand, her distance from all friends and advisers would give Miss King a freedom which was very perilous.
"I can't think," she said, "what takes either of you to such a place."
"I'm going to catch salmon," said Sir Gilbert. "Millicent tells me that she wants rest and quiet. I daresay she does."
"I wish very much," said Lady Hawkesby, "that she was safely married to some quiet sensible man."
There was a good deal of sound common sense and knowledge of human nature in her "safely." Lady Hawkesby was not a brilliant woman. She was in many ways a foolish woman. But she had certain beliefs founded on the experience of many generations of people like herself, and therefore entitled to respect. She believed that a woman is much less likely to wander from the beaten paths of life when her hands are held by a husband, if possible "a quiet sensible man," and her petticoats grasped by several clinging children.