"Maude if you are such an idiot I'll shake you. Find you've made a dredful mistake?—can't bear your husband?—keep thinking always of Edward? A child might write such utter rubish but not you, what does it matter whether one's husband is liked or disliked, provided he gives one position and wealth? Go to Amiens and stop with Jane for a week and see her plight and then grumble at your own, you are an idiot.
"I'm quite glad about your taking this town-house, and shall enter into posession myself as soon as the servants are up, and await you. Bob's quite well and joins to-day and of course gives up his lodgings, which have been wretchedly confined and uncomfortable and where I should have gone to but for this move of yours I don't know. Mind you bring me over a Parisian bonnet or two or some articles of that sort. I'm nearly in rags, Kirton's as undutiful as he can be but it's that wife of his.
"Your affectionate mother,
"C. Kirton."
The letter will give you some guide to the policy of Maude Hartledon since her marriage. She did find she had made a mistake. She cared no more for her husband now than she had cared for him before; and it was a positive fact that she despised him for walking so tamely into the snare laid for him by herself and her mother. Nevertheless she triumphed; he had made her a peeress, and she did care for that; she cared also for the broad lands of Hartledon. That she was unwise in assuming her own will so promptly, with little regard to consulting his, she might yet discover.
At Versailles that day—to which place they went in accordance with Maude's wish—there occurred a rencontre which Lord Hartledon would willingly have gone to the very ends of the earth to avoid. It happened to be rather full for Versailles; many of the visitors in Paris apparently having taken it into their minds to go; indeed, Maude's wish was induced by the fact that some of her acquaintances in the gay capital were going also.
You may possibly remember a very small room in the galleries, exceedingly small as compared with the rest, chiefly hung with English portraits. They were in this room, amidst the little crowd that filled it, when Lord Hartledon became aware that his wife had encountered some long-lost friend. There was much greeting and shaking of hands. He caught the name—Kattle; and being a somewhat singular name, he recognised it for that of the lady who had been sojourning at Cannes, and had sent the news of Miss Ashton's supposed engagement to the countess-dowager. There was the usual babble on both sides—where each was staying, had been staying, would be staying; and then Lord Hartledon heard the following words from Mrs. Kattle.
"How strange I should have seen you! I have met you, the Fords, and the Ashtons here, and did not know that any of you were in Paris. It's true I only arrived yesterday. Such a long illness, my dear, I had at Turin!"
"The Ashtons!" involuntarily repeated Maude. "Are they here?—in the château?" And it instantly occurred to her how she should like to meet them, and parade her triumph. If ever a spark of feeling for her husband arose within Maude's heart, it was when she thought of Anne Ashton. She was bitterly jealous of her still.
"Yes, here; I saw them not three minutes ago. They are only now on their road home from Cannes. Fancy their making so long a stay!"