the acquaintance offered him,--he was moved, by the spirit of
contradiction, and the spiteful delight even in frivolous annoyance, to
conciliate and court the intimacy he had at first disdained: and then,
by degrees, sympathy in political matters and old recollections of
sportive, careless boyhood cemented the intimacy into a more familiar
bond than the sectarian had contracted really with any of his late
associates.

Lucretia regarded this growing friendship with great uneasiness; the
uneasiness increased to alarm when one day, in the presence of Ardworth,
Braddell, writhing with a sudden spasm, said: "I cannot account for
these strange seizures; I think verily I am poisoned!" and his dull eye
rested on Lucretia's pallid brow. She was unusually thoughtful for some
days after this remark; and one morning she informed her husband that
she had received the intelligence that a relation, from whom she
had pecuniary expectations, was dangerously ill, and requested his
permission to visit this sick kinsman, who dwelt in a distant county.
Braddell's eyes brightened at the thought of her absence; with little
further questioning he consented; and Lucretia, sure perhaps that the
barb was in the side of her victim, and reckoning, it may be, on greater
freedom from suspicion if her husband died in her absence, left the
house. It was, indeed, to the neighbourhood of her kindred that she
went. In a private conversation with Ardworth, when questioning him of
his news of the present possessor of Laughton, he had informed her that
he had heard accidentally that Vernon's two sons (Percival was not then
born) were sickly; and she went into Hampshire secretly and unknown, to
see what were really the chances that her son might yet become the lord
of her lost inheritance.

During this absence, Braddell, now gloomily aware that his days were
numbered, resolved to put into practice the idea long contemplated,
and even less favoured by his spite than justified by the genuine
convictions of his conscience. Whatever his faults, sincere at least in
his religious belief, he might well look with dread to the prospect of
the training and education his son would receive from the hands of a
mother who had blasphemed his sect and openly proclaimed her infidelity.
By will, it is true, he might create a trust, and appoint guardians to
his child. But to have lived under the same roof with his wife,--nay, to
have carried her back to that roof when she had