e cared for it more than for the others. Altogether
Lady Hartledon puzzled her brains in vain: she could not make him out.
When she questioned him he would deny that there was anything the matter,
and said it was her fancy.

They were at Hartledon alone: that is, without the countess-dowager.
That respected lady, though not actually domiciled with them during the
past twelve-month, had paid them three long visits. She was determined
to retain her right in the household--if right it could be called. The
dowager was by far too wary to do otherwise; and her behaviour to Anne
was exceedingly mild. But somehow she contrived to retain, or continually
renew, her evil influence over the children; though so insidiously, that
Lady Hartledon could never detect how or when it was done, or openly meet
it. Neither could she effectually counteract it. So surely as the dowager
came, so surely did the young boy and his sister become unruly with their
step-mother; ill-natured and rude. Lady Hartledon was kind, judicious,
and good; and things would so far be remedied during the crafty dowager's
absences, as to promise a complete cure; but whenever she returned the
evil broke out again. Anne was sorely perplexed. She did not like to deny
the children to their grandmother, who was more nearly related to them
than she herself; and she could only pray that time would bring about
some remedy. The dowager passed her time pretty equally between their
house and her son's. Lord Kirton had not married again, owing, perhaps,
to the watch and ward kept over him. But as soon as he started off to the
Continent, or elsewhere, where she could not follow him, then off she
came, without notice, to England and Lord Hartledon's. And Val, in his
good-nature, bore the infliction passively so long as she kept civil and
peaceable.

In this also her husband's behaviour puzzled Anne. Disliking the dowager
beyond every other created being, he yet suffered her to indulge his
children; and if any little passage-at-arms supervened, took her part
rather than his wife's.

"I cannot understand you, Val," Anne said to him one day, in tones of
pain. "You are not as you used to be." And his only answer was to strain
his wife to his bosom with an impassioned gesture of love.

But these were only episodes in their generally happy life. Never more
happy, more free from any external influence, than when Thomas Carr
arrived there on this identical Saturday. He went in unexpec