Very clever of him to
palm you off with this tale: a man may get into five hundred troubles not
convenient to disclose to his wife."
Except that Lady Hartledon's cheek flushed a little, she made no answer;
she held firmly--at least she thought she held firmly--to her own side
of the case. Her mother, on the contrary, adopted the new view, and
dismissed it from her thoughts accordingly.
Maude went to church in the evening, sitting alone in the great pew, pale
and quiet. Anne Ashton was also alone; and the two whilom rivals, the
triumphant and the rejected, could survey each other to their heart's
content.
Not very triumphant was Maude's feeling. Strange perhaps to say, the
suggestion of the old dowager, like instilled poison, was making its way
into her very veins. Her thoughts had been busy with the matter ever
since. One positive conviction lay in her heart--that Dr. Ashton, now
reading the first lesson before her, for he was taking the whole of the
service that evening, could not, under any circumstance, be guilty of a
false assertion or subterfuge. One solution of the difficulty presented
itself to her--that her mother, in her irascibility, had misunderstood
the Rector; and yet that was improbable. As Maude half sat, half lay back
in the pew, for the faint feeling was especially upon her that evening,
she thought she would give a great deal to set the matter at rest.
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