Maude broke into a laugh. "Your friend, Pleader Carr—or whatever he calls himself—must be as thin-skinned as you are, Val, to fancy that a rubbishing action of that sort, brought against a husband, can reflect disgrace on the wife! Separate, indeed! Has he lived in a wood all his life? Well, I am going upstairs."
"A moment yet, Maude! You will take a caution from me, won't you? Don't speak of this; don't allude to it, even to me. It may be arranged yet, you know."
"So it may," acquiesced Maude. "Let your friend Carr see the doctor, and offer to pay the damages down."
He might have resented this speech for Dr. Ashton's sake, in a happier moment, but resentment had been beaten out of him now. And Lady Hartledon decided that her husband was a simpleton, for instead of going to sleep like a reasonable man, he tossed and turned by her side until daybreak.
CHAPTER XXI.
SECRET CARE.
From that hour Lord Hartledon was a changed man. He went about as one who has some awful fear upon him, starting at shadows. That his manner was inexplicable, even allowing that he had some great crime on his conscience, a looker-on had not failed to observe. He was very tender with his wife; far more so than he had been at all; anxious, as it seemed, to indulge her every fancy, gratify her every whim. But when it came to going into society with her, then he hesitated; he would and he wouldn't, reminding Maude of his old vacillation, which indeed had seemed to have been laid aside for ever. It was as though he appeared not to know what to do; what he ought to do; his own wish or inclination having no part in it.
"Why won't you go with me?" she said to him angrily one day that he had retracted his assent at the last moment. "Is it that you care so much for Anne Ashton, that you don't care to be seen with me?"
"Oh, Maude! If you knew how little Anne Ashton is in my thoughts now! When by chance I do think of her, it is to be thankful I did not marry her," he added, in a tone of self-communing.