‘I shall take you at your word. But you are more likely to come back to Borcel than I to come to London, for, mind, I count upon your coming next summer. And now you are so thick with the Manor House people you’ve some inducement for coming,’ added Martin, with the faintest touch of bitterness.
‘There is temptation enough for me at Borcel End, Martin, without any question of the Manor House.’
Martin shook his head incredulously.
‘Miss Bellingham is too pretty to be left out of the question,’ he said.
‘Miss Bellingham! A mere Dresden china beauty, a very fine specimen of human waxwork. I have told you my adventure in that line, Martin. I’m not likely to make a second venture.’
They parted with the friendliest farewell, and Maurice felt that he was leaving something more than a chance acquaintance behind him at Borcel End.
CHAPTER IX
‘SUCH A LORD IS LOVE.’
Nothing could be more perfect than that serenity which ruled the domestic life of Penwyn Manor. The judgment which Maurice Clissold had formed of that life, as seen from the outside, was fully confirmed by its inner every-day aspect. Mr. and Mrs. Penwyn had no company manners. They did not pose themselves before a stranger as model husband and wife, and settle their small differences at their leisure in the sanctuary of the lady’s dressing-room or the gentleman’s study. They had no differences, but lived in each other and for each other.
Yet, so impossible is perfect happiness to erring mortality, even here there was a hitch. Affection the most devoted, peace that knew not so much as a summer cloud across its fair horizon—these there were truly—but not quite happiness. Madge Penwyn had discovered somehow, by some subtle power of intuition given to anxious wives, that the husband she loved so fondly was not altogether happy, that he had his hours of lassitude and depression, when the world seemed to him, like Hamlet’s world, ‘out of joint,’—his dark moments, when even she had no spell that could exorcise his demon.