journey down
to Exeter, he was almost overwhelmed by the difficulties of the
situation. His case as a man was so much worse than hers as a woman.
The speaking must all be done by him, and what was there that he
could say? There was still present to him a keen sense of the wrong
that he had endured; though he owned to himself that the punishment
which at the spur of the moment he had resolved upon inflicting was
too severe,--both upon her and upon himself. And though he felt
that he had been injured, he did gradually acknowledge that he had
believed something worse than the truth. How to read the riddle he
did not know, but there was a riddle which he had not read aright. If
Cecilia should still be silent, he must still be left in the dark.
But he did understand that he was to expect no confession of a fault,
and that he was to exact no show of repentance.

When the train arrived at Exeter he determined to be driven at once
to the Hotel. It made him unhappy to think that everyone around him
should be aware that he was occupying rooms at an inn while his wife
was living in the town; but he did not dare to take his portmanteau
to Mrs. Holt's house and hang up his hat in her hall as though
nothing had been the matter. "Put it into a cab," he said to a porter
as the door was opened, "and bid him drive to the Clarence."

But a man whose face he remembered had laid his hand upon his valise
before it was well out of the railway carriage. "Please, Sir," said
the man, "you are to go up to the house, and I'm to carry your
things. I am Sam Barnet, the gardener."

"Very well, Sam," said Mr. Western. "Go on and I'll follow you." Now,
as he well knew, the house at St. David's was less than half a mile
from the railway station.

He felt that his misery would be over in ten minutes, and yet for
ten minutes how miserable a man he was! Whilst she was trembling
with joy, a joy that was only dashed by a vague fear of his possible
sternness, he was blaming his fate as it shortened by every step the
distance between him and his wife. At last he had entered the path
of the little garden, and the door of the house was open before him.
He ventured to look, but did not see her. He was in the hall, but
yet he did not see her. "Cecilia is in the breakfast parlour," said
the voice of Mrs. Holt, whom in his confusion he did not notice. The
breakfast parlour was in the back part of the house, looking out into
the garden, and thither he went. The