No man ever shrank
from a prison as he shrank from Hartledon.
"I cannot leave London at all just yet. Thomas Carr is remaining here for
me, when he ought to be on circuit, and I must stay with him. I wish you
would go anywhere else, rather than to Hartledon."
The tone was so painfully earnest, that a momentary suspicion crossed her
of his having some other motive. It passed away almost as it arose, and
she accused him of being unreasonable.
Unreasonable it did appear to be. "If you have any real reason to urge
against Hartledon, tell it me," she said. But he mentioned none--save
that it was his "wish" not to go.
And Lady Hartledon, rather piqued, gave the necessary orders on the
following day for the removal. No further confidential converse, or
approach to it, took place between her and her husband; but up to the
last moment she thought he would relent and accompany her. Nothing of the
sort. He was anxious for her every comfort on the journey, and saw her
off himself: nothing more.
"I never thought you would allow me to go alone," she resentfully
whispered, as he held her hand after she was seated in the train.
He shook his head. "It is your fault, Maude. I told you I could not go to
Hartledon."
And so she went down in rather an angry frame of mind. Many a time and
oft had she pictured to herself the triumph of their first visit to
Calne, the place where she had taken so much pains to win him: but the
arrival was certainly shorn of its glory.
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