He threw himself into a chair, and tried to collect his thoughts, and shape a coherent recollection of Magdalen’s words. At last he had gradually pieced them together, and with them the scene in which they had been uttered—the great square, draughty vestibule before the Balder Hall door; the north-west storm wind screaming past it; his own figure, and that of Magdalen; the way in which they had stood close together, and the vows he had forced from her; and how at last she had put her hands upon his shoulders, and looked him straight in the eyes, and said that she did not claim any vows from him, but only bade him remember that whatever wrong he did her, directly or indirectly, from that day forth, he did to his wife, for that he was hers, as much as she was his. ‘Well,’ he thought, as he laughed a feeble echo of his old blustering laugh, ‘it would not be the first time a man had wronged his wife either; but I shan’t. I shall tell the little baggage not to make a fool of herself, but to keep her languishing eyes for her bear of a lover.’ Otho, as he made these reflections, was thinking of no one in London. His sister had taken it for granted that he came straight from his sojourn with Gilbert Langstroth,—a very great mistake, as he had driven that very morning from Friarsdale to Darlington, and taken the train thence to Bradstane. On the following day some kind of an interview took place between Otho and Magdalen. Eleanor saw very little of the other. They were amicable when they met, but nothing more. The day after that Otho went into Friarsdale, not saying that he was returning there, but simply that he was going. Eleanor was thus again left alone, and as soon as her young visitor had returned to the Vicarage, she began her preparations for removing to the Dower House. One day, in the course of these preparations, she had cause to go into the shop of Ada Dixon’s father. Mrs. Dixon herself came forward to serve her. She was, as usual, stout, pompous, and important-looking, had on a superfine gown, and a cap which struck Miss Askam as being ridiculously young and small for her. Mrs. Dixon wore it with an air, as if it had been a coronet, which added to the absurdity of the spectacle. Eleanor had never liked this woman, whose hard eyes and want of simplicity and directness had always offended her; and she liked not the air with which she now came forward. But that it was (thought Eleanor) absurd on the face of the thing, she would have considered the glance bestowed upon her by Mrs. Dixon as an insolent one. It was at least hard, bold, and supercilious. Not thinking it worth while to betray that she had even noticed this manner, Eleanor made her purchases, which were set aside for her by Mrs. Dixon in lofty silence. While she sought in her purse for the sum with which to pay for the things, she inquired— ‘How is your daughter, Mrs. Dixon? I have not seen her lately.’