The Park lay before him, dark and misty;
the lights of the few vehicles passing gleamed now and again; the hum of
life was dying out in the streets, men's free steps, careless voices. He
looked down, and wondered whether any one of those men knew what care
meant as _he_ knew it; whether the awful skeleton, that never quitted
him night or day, could hold such place with another. He was Earl of
Hartledon; wealthy, young, handsome; he had no bad habits to hamper him;
and yet he would willingly have changed lots at hazard with any one of
those passers-by, could his breast, by so doing, have been eased of its
burden.
"What are you looking at, Val?"
His wife had come up and stolen her arm within his, as she asked the
question, looking out too.
"Not at anything in particular," he replied, making a prisoner of her
hand. "The night's hot, Maude."
"Oh, I am getting tired of London!" she exclaimed. "It is always hot now;
and I believe I ought to be away from it."
"Yes."
"That letter I had this morning was from Ireland, from mamma. I told her,
when I wrote last, how I felt; and you never read such a lecture as she
gave me in return. She asked me whether I was mad, that I should be going
galvanizing about when I ought rather to be resting three parts of my
time."
"Galvanizing?" said Lord Hartledon.
"So she wrote: she never waits to choose her words--you know mamma!
I suppose she meant to imply that I was always on the move.
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