pproach the subject?

He felt that any attempt at an explanation was impossible. It was not
for him to precipitate Lady Maulevrier's end by prying into her secrets.
Granted that shame and dishonour of some kind were involved in the
existence of that strange old man, he, Lord Hartfield, must endure his
portion in that shame--must be content to leave the dark riddle
unsolved.

He resigned himself to this state of things, and tried to forget the
cloud that hung over the house of Haselden; but the sense of a mystery,
a fatal family secret, which must come to light sooner or later--since
all such secrets are known at last--known, sifted, and bandied about
from lip to lip, and published in a thousand different newspapers, and
cried aloud in the streets--the sense of such a secret, the dread of
such a revelation weighed upon him heavily.

Maulevrier, the restless, was off to Argyleshire for the grouse shooting
as soon as he had deposited Lady Lesbia comfortably at Fellside.

'I should only be in your way if I stopped,' he said, 'for you and Molly
have hardly got over the honeymoon stage yet, though you put on the airs
of Darby and Joan. I shall be back in a week or ten days.'

'In Lady Maulevrier's state of health I don't think you ought to stay
away very long,' said Hartfield.

'Poor Lady Maulevrier! She never cared much for me, don't you know. But
I suppose it would seem unkind if I were to be out of the way when the
end comes. The end! Good heavens! how coolly I talk of it; and a year
ago I thought she was as immortal as Fairfield yonder.'

He went away, his spirits dashed by that awful thought of death, and
Lord and Lady Hartfield had the house to themselves, since Lesbia hardly
counted. She seldom left her own rooms, except to sit with her
grandmother for an hour. She lay on her sofa--or sat in a low arm-chair
by the window, reading Keats or Shelley--or only dreaming--dreaming over
the brief golden time of her life, with its fond delusions, its false
brightness. Mr. Horton went to see her every day--felt the feeble little
pulse which seemed hardly to have force enough to beat--urged her to
struggle against apathy and inertia, to walk a little, to go for a long
drive every day, to live in the open air--to which instructions she paid
not the slightest attention. The desire for life was gone. Disappointed
in her ambition, betrayed in her love, humiliated, duped, degraded--a
social failure. What had she to live for? Sh