He left immediately after this to ascertain Lady Ashbridge's feelings
about it, and walked home with a complete resumption of his usual
exuberance. It indeed seemed an admirable plan. It relieved him from
the nightmare of his wife's continual presence, and this he expressed
to himself by thinking that it relieved her from his. It was not that
he was deficient in sympathy for her, for in his self-centred way he was
fond of her, but he could sympathise with her just as well at Ashbridge.
He could do no good to her, and he had not for her that instinct of love
which would make it impossible for him to leave her. He would also be
spared the constant irritation of having Michael in the house, and this
he expressed to himself by saying that Michael disliked him, and would
be far more at his ease without him. Furthermore, Michael would be able
to continue his studies . . . of this too, in spite of the fact that he
had always done his best to discourage them, he made a self-laudatory
translation, by telling himself that he was very glad not to have
to cause Michael to discontinue them. In fine, he persuaded himself,
without any difficulty, that he was a very fine fellow in consenting to
a plan that suited him so admirably, and only wondered that he had not
thought of it himself. There was nothing, after his wife had expressed
her joyful acceptance of it, to detain him in town, and he left for
Ashbridge that afternoon, while Michael moved into the house in Curzon
Street.

Michael entered upon his new life without the smallest sense of having
done anything exceptional or even creditable. It was so perfectly
obvious to him that he had to be with his mother that he had no
inclination to regard himself at all in the matter; the thing was
as simple as it had been to him to help Francis out of financial
difficulties with a gift of money. There was no effort of will, no
sense of sacrifice about it, it was merely the assertion of a paramount
instinct. The life limited his freedom, for, for a great part of the day
he was with his mother, and between his music and his attendance on her,
he had but little leisure. Occasionally he went out to see his friends,
but any prolonged absence on his part always made her uneasy, and he
would often find her, on his return, sitting in the hall, waiting
for him, so as to enjoy his presence from the first moment that he
re-entered the house. But though he found no food for reflection in
himself, Aunt Ba