Any one bringing me this information privately will find it well worth
his while."
He went forth into the busy streets again, sick at heart; and upon
reaching his chambers wrote a note for a detective officer, and put some
business into his hands.
Meanwhile Lord Hartledon remained in London. When the term for which
they had engaged the furnished house was expired he took lodgings in
Grafton Street; and there he stayed, his frame of mind restless and
unsatisfactory. Lady Hartledon wrote to him sometimes, and he answered
her. She said not a word about the discovery she had made in regard to
the alleged action-at-law; but she never failed in every letter to ask
what he was doing, and when he was coming home--meaning to Hartledon.
He put her off in the best way he could: he and Carr were very busy
together, he said: as to home, he could not mention any particular time.
And Lady Hartledon bottled up her curiosity and her wrath, and waited
with what patience she possessed.
The truth was--and, perhaps, the reader may have divined it--that graver
motives than the sensitive feeling of not liking to face the Ashtons were
keeping Lord Hartledon from his wife and home. He had once, in his
bachelor days, wished himself a savage in some remote desert, where his
civilized acquaintance could not come near him; he had a thousand times
more reason to wish himself one now.
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