He must have gone round to the
stables.

She closed the window and shrank into bed, where she cried herself to
sleep. This child, their only one, Betty, beloved ambitiously by her
mother, and with uncalculating passionateness by her father, was
frequently made wretched by such episodes as this; though she was too
young to care very deeply, for her own sake, whether her mother betrothed
her to the gentleman discussed or not.

The Squire had often gone out of the house in this manner, declaring that
he would never return, but he had always reappeared in the morning. The
present occasion, however, was different in the issue: next day she was
told that her father had ridden to his estate at Falls-Park early in the
morning on business with his agent, and might not come back for some
days.

* * * * *

Falls-Park was over twenty miles from King's-Hintock Court, and was
altogether a more modest centre-piece to a more modest possession than
the latter. But as Squire Dornell came in view of it that February
morning, he thought that he had been a fool ever to leave it, though it
was for the sake of the greatest heiress in Wessex. Its classic front,
of the period of the second Charles, derived from its regular features a
dignity which the great, battlemented, heterogeneous mansion of his wife
could not eclipse. Altogether he was sick at heart, and the gloom which
the densely-timbered park threw over the scene did not tend to remove the
depression of this rubicund man of eight-and-forty, who sat so heavily
upon his gelding. The child, his darling Betty: there lay the root of
his trouble. He was unhappy when near his wife, he was unhappy when away
from his little girl; and from this dilemma there was no practicable
escape. As a consequence he indulged rather freely in the pleasures of
the table, became what was called a three bottle man, and, in his wife's
estimation, less and less presentable to her polite friends from town.

He was received by the two or three old servants who were in charge of
the lonely place, where a few rooms only were kept habitable for his use
or that of his friends when hunting; and during the morning he was made
more comfortable by the arrival of his faithful servant Tupcombe from
King's-Hintock. But after a day or two spent here in solitude he began
to feel that he had made a mistake in coming. By leaving King's-Hintock
in his anger he had thrown away his best opportunity of counteracting hi