'I shall never be any better,' said Lord Maulevrier, testily; 'that infernal climate has shattered my constitution.'
'Two or three months of perfect rest and good nursing will make a new man of you. I have arranged that we shall go straight from here to Fellside. No one can plague you there with that disguised impertinence called sympathy. You can give all your thoughts to the ordeal before you, and be ready to meet your accusers. Fortunately, you have no Burke against you.'
'Fellside? You think of going to Fellside?'
'Yes. You know how fond I am of that place. I little thought when you settled it upon me—a cottage in Westmoreland with fifty acres of garden and meadow—so utterly insignificant—that I should ever like it better than any of your places.'
'A charming retreat in summer; but we have never wintered there? What put it into your head to go there at such a season as this? Why, I daresay the snow is on the tops of the hills already.'
'It is the only place I know where you will not be watched and talked about,' replied Lady Maulevrier. 'You will be out of the eye of the world. I should think that consideration would weigh more with you than two or three degrees of the thermometer.'
'I detest cold,' said the Earl, 'and in my weak health----'
'We will take care of you,' answered her ladyship; and in the discussion which followed she bore herself so firmly that her husband was fain to give way.
How could a disgraced and ruined man, broken in health and spirits, contest the mere details of life with a high-spirited woman ten years his junior?
The Earl wanted to go to London, and remain there at least a week, but this her ladyship strenuously opposed. He must see his lawyer, he urged; there were steps to be taken which could be taken only under legal advice—counsel to be retained. If this lying invention of Satan were really destined to take the form of a public trial, he must be prepared to fight his foes on their own ground.