band, vexed on all sides; and she took refuge in her fatigue
and was silent.

The dowager went to church on the following day. Maude would not go. The
hot anger flushed into her face at the thought of showing herself there
for the first time, unaccompanied by her husband: to Maude's mind it
seemed that she must look to others so very much like a deserted wife.
She comes home alone; he stays in London! "Ah, why did he not come down
only for this one Sunday, and go back again--if he must have gone?" she
thought.

A month or two ago Maude had not cared enough for him to reason like
this. The countess-dowager ensconced herself in a corner of the Hartledon
state-pew, and from her blinking eyes looked out upon the Ashtons. Anne,
with her once bright face looking rather wan, her modest demeanour; Mrs.
Ashton, so essentially a gentlewoman; the doctor, sensible, clever,
charitable, beyond all doubt a good man--a feeling came over the mind of
the sometimes obtuse woman that of all the people before her they looked
the least likely to enter on the sort of lawsuit spoken of by Maude. But
never a doubt occurred to her that they _had_ entered on it.

Lady Hartledon remained at home, her prayer-book in her hand. She was
thinking she could steal out to the evening service; it might not be so
much noticed then, her being alone. Listlessly enough she sat, toying
with her prayer-book rather than reading it. She had never pretended to
be religious, had not been trained to be so; and reading a prayer-book,
when not in church, was quite unusual to her. But there are seasons in
a woman's life, times when peril is looked forward to, that bring thought
even to the most careless nature. Maude was trying to play at "being
good," and was reading the psalms for the day in an absent fashion, her
thoughts elsewhere; and the morning passed on. The quiet apathy of her
present state, compared with the restless fever which had stirred her
during her last sojourn at Hartledon, was remarkable.

Suddenly there burst in upon her the countess-dowager: that estimable
lady's bonnet awry, her face scarlet, herself in a commotion.

"I didn't suppose you'd have done it, Maude! You might play tricks upon
other people, I think, but not upon your own mother."

The interlude was rather welcome to Maude, rousing her from her apathy.
Not for some few moments, however, could she understand the cause of
complaint.

It appeared that the countess-dowager, with that a