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.
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