"He is a proud man," her husband said, gravely. "It is not easy for a proud man with nothing to choose a wife with a large fortune."
"Ah, but there is something more," she cried, "it cannot be only that. What has kept him so reserved in every particular all these years?"
But Grenville could not help her, and all the afternoon she worried and fretted in silence.
In the evening she said to him anxiously, after again discussing the news, "Mrs. Fleetwood has often asked me to visit her in Salisbury. Shall I go now? Perhaps if I could get Major Carew to talk?..."
"You will never get him to talk," with quiet conviction.
"Nevertheless, my husband, I feel I must try. We have so much, you and I. One can but make the effort."
She got up from her chair and went round to him, and climbed on to his knee and hid her face, because she was troubled and unhappy.
"Tell me something I can do to help them, Billy?" she pleaded.
He fondled her hair in silence a moment, and then, because he thought it might comfort her afterwards to know she had tried, he said, "There is no harm in your going to Mrs. Fleetwood's. I think the change would do you good."
And Ailsa went to bed a little comforted that at least he sanctioned her journey.