her temper almost beyond repression. Considering that Maude did not
profess to love her husband very much, it was astonishing how keenly she
felt this.

"Are you and Hartledon upon good terms?" asked the countess-dowager after
a pause, during which she had never taken her eyes from her daughter's
face.

"It would be early days to be on any other."

"Oh," said the dowager. "And you did not write me word from Paris that
you found you had made a mistake, that you could not bear your husband!
Eh, Maude?"

A tinge came into Maude's cheeks. "And you, mamma, told me that I was to
rule my husband with an iron hand, never allowing him to have a will of
his own, never consulting him! Both you and I were wrong," she continued
quietly. "I wrote that letter in a moment of irritation; and you were
assuming what has not proved to be a fact. I like my husband now quite
well enough to keep friends with him; his kindness to me is excessive;
but I find, with all my wish to rule him, if I had the wish, I could not
do it. He has a will of his own, and he exerts it in spite of me; and I
am quite sure he will continue to exert it, whenever he fancies he is in
the right. You never saw any one so changed from what he used to be."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean in asserting his own will. But he is changed in other ways. It
seems to me that he has never been quite the same man since that night in
the chapel. He has been more thoughtful; and all the old vacillation is
gone."

The countess-dowager could not understand at all; neither did she
believe; and she only stared at Maude.

"His _not_ coming down with me is a proof that he exercises his own will
now. I wished him to come very much, and he knew it; but you see he has
not done so."

"And what do you say is keeping him?" repeated the countess-dowager.

"Business--"

"Ah," interrupted the dowager, before Maude could finish, "that's the
general excuse. Always suspect it, my dear."

"Suspect what?" asked Maude.

"When a man says that, and gets his wife out of the way with it, rely
upon it he is pursuing some nice little interests of his own."

Lady Hartledon understood the implication; she felt nettled, and a flush
rose to her face. In her husband's loyalty (always excepting his feeling
towards Miss Ashton) she rested fully assured.

"You did not allow me to finish," was the cold rejoinder. "Business _is_
keeping him in town, for one thing; for another, I think he cannot get
ov