“Just so,” put in Mr. Ashton, drawing his arm through that of his junior partner. “And the fact that Augusta shrinks at your name has spoken so loudly to us that if ever she sits on your hearth again it won’t be with my consent.—Come away, Clegg.”
After this declaration, Aspinall changed his tactics. He wrote to his wife, requesting her return; then entreating it; and finally went in person to beseech her to “come back,” vowing to “atone for the past with the devotion of a life.”
The young mother yearned for her babe, the tender-hearted wife could not resist the appeal of the husband whom with all his faults she yet loved; and, regardless of the previsions of her mother, or the entreaties of her father, she allowed him to drive her home again to the Grange.
Her first thought was the nursery. There she found, in addition to her own boy, drawing its sustenance from the nurse’s breast, a well-dressed child, some two years old, playing with a wooden milkmaid-rattle on the rug. Something in the child’s face and auburn curls made her ask, “Sarah, whose child is that?”
“Mine. Whose should it be?” was the pert answer; and the boldness of the woman’s manner checked further inquiry. But Augusta’s heart had received a shock which shook the pedestal on which her idol sat enthroned.
For a short pace Laurence kept terms with his wife; and before her father or strangers he was her most devoted slave; but she underwent a species of slow torture in secret.
She soon found that Sarah Mostyn was mistress of the house as well as of the nursery, and that Sarah Mostyn’s child was of as much importance as her own baby-boy.
Then he filled the Grange with his riotous associates, and compelled his wife to do the honours of his table, though their oaths and conversation overpowered her with disgust. And if one flushed with wine, or more bold than the rest, paid her a compliment, or looked too warm an admiration, Laurence was sure to find his way to her side with his common undertone threat—“D—— n you, madam, you shall smart for this!”—a threat always accompanied with sly pinches, which left their marks beneath her sleeves. Then, straightway, “my dear,” or “my love” would be asked, in the blandest of tones, to sing a song, play a rondo, or perform some act of courtesy for the very guest who had excited his jealousy.
They had few lady visitors. The neighbourhood was remote from town, and sparsely inhabited. Mr. Laurence Aspinall’s reputation was as a yellow flag to warn gentlewomen who had daughters or husbands to lose against close intimacy with their neighbours of the Grange. Pitying the isolation of one so formed to adorn society, Mr. Aspinall gave mixed parties at Ardwick Green, in the name of Mrs. Laurence, when the splendour of her attire and the assiduous attention of her husband set rumour to contradict rumour. But save on an occasional family gathering, she saw few of her own sex at Fallowfield.