When the dowager had recovered her breath she attempted, though feebly, to expostulate. The Viscount cut her short. “My mind is made up, ma’am. It is time I was thinking of settling down. I should have done all this at the outset. It may be too late: I don’t know that. But if — when — my wife returns to me we will contrive better, I hope.”
“I am sure I am the last person alive to wish to keep you out of your house,” quavered Lady Sheringham. “But I do not know why you should suppose your wife will return to you, for ten to one she has run off with another man!”
“No,” said his lordship, turning his back upon her, and staring out of the window at the bleak gardens. “That is something else I desire you will not repeat, ma’am. It is untrue.”
“You cannot know that, Anthony, my poor boy! She never cared for you! It was all vanity, and the wish of becoming a person of consequence!”
He shook his head. “She never thought of that. I didn’t know it — never stopped to think, or — or consider it, but she did care for me. Much more than I cared for her — then. But if I could only find her — I’ve racked my brains, and I can’t think where she can have gone, or to whom! She must have sought shelter with someone! Good God, ma’am, it keeps me awake at night, the fear that she may be alone, without money, or friends, or — No, no, she must be with some friend I know nothing of!”
“Very likely she went to that vulgar cousin of hers,” said his mother waspishly.
He wheeled round, rather pale. “Mrs Hoby!” he ejaculated. “How did I come to forget her? Good God, what a fool I have been! I am obliged to you, ma’am!”
He set off for town again that very day, and repaired to the Hobys’ house. A rather slatternly servant opened the door to him, when he had knocked on it for the third time, and informed him that her master and mistress were away from London. A few inquiries elicited the further information that the Hobys had left for a visit to Ireland the day following Hero’s departure from Half Moon Street. With a darkening brow, the Viscount asked if this had been a long-standing engagement. The servant thought not; they had packed up and gone in a hurry; she thought a letter had arrived which made them take this course. But when he asked if they had gone alone, or had taken a friend with them, she shook her head and replied that she couldn’t say, not having witnessed the actual departure, but she believed they had been alone.
The Viscount went home to think this over. The more he thought, the more convinced he became that Hero had indeed flown to her cousin, and was now being concealed by this lady. He had never liked Theresa Hoby; her husband he barely knew, but had little hesitation in condemning as bad ton; and gradually there grew up in his breast a feeling of indignation that Hero should have fled to the very people above all others whom he most disliked. He remembered that he had forbidden her to hold any close intercourse with Mrs Hoby; remembered also that she had largely ignored this prohibition; and conveniently forgot that it had been uttered in the heat of the moment, and never seriously repeated. He began to be angry, and from picturing Hero in all manner of appalling plights passed to imagining herself amongst a set of people of whom her husband disapproved. A cynical remark let fall by his Uncle Prosper, that no doubt the minx was bent on giving him the fright of his life, took root in Sherry’s mind, and drove him to throw himself, without the slightest enjoyment, into much the same kind of excesses which were being indulged in by Lord Wrotham. There was a good deal of bravado about this, a suggestion of gritted teeth, and more than a suggestion of obstinacy; but it made Mr Ringwood pull down the corners of his mouth and shake a despondent head.
Six weeks after Hero’s disappearance, the Hobys came back to London. Sherry heard of their arrival, and grimly awaited the return of his wife. She did not come; but her cousin did — to call upon her. The Viscount received her, and ten minutes in her company were enough to convince him that she knew nothing of Hero’s whereabouts, had not the smallest notion of her being away from home, and had journeyed into Ireland for the purpose of attending her mother-in-law’s sickbed.