Time softens most thing's. Mrs. Penn grew to forget her fleeting marriage and with it the episodes of her middle life; and went back to her old likings and prejudices. Her heart's allegiance to Edwin Barley returned; she was of his kin, and the wrongs inflicted by George Heneage, temporarily forgotten, resumed all their sway within her. While she was at Marden (travelling about from place to place with Mrs. Howard) some accidental occurrence caused her to suspect that George Heneage, instead of being abroad, was in concealment in England, and within a drive of Chandos. She at once wrote news of this to Mr. Edwin Barley, with whom she had held no communication since the advent of that letter of his at her marriage. It caused him to remove himself, and four or five of his household, to the vicinity of Chandos. There he took up his abode, and spent his time watching the house and the movements of Mr. Chandos, in the hope to gain some clue to the retreat of George Heneage. With this exception, the watching, which caused him to stroll at unorthodox hours into the groves and private paths, to peer in at windows by night, his watching was inoffensive. Mrs. Penn, on her side, seized on the opportunity afforded by Mrs. Freeman's illness (it was as though fortune favoured her), and got into Chandos. My presence in it might have been a serious counter-check, only that I did not recognise her. She did not recognise me in the first interview, not until the day when I sent in my name at Mrs. Marden's. Of course Mrs. Penn's object after that was to _keep_ me in ignorance. She had really been to Nulle for a week or two; it was the autumn I first went there; had seen me at church with the school, and so tried to persuade me it was there I had seen her. Much as she wanted me away from Chandos in the furtherance of her own ends, cruel as were the means she used to try to effect it, she had, strange to say, taken a liking for me; and in her _dis_like to Mr. Chandos she had not much cared what wild untruths she told me of him, hoping to separate us effectually.