Through Gilbert, she and Michael had word that Otho was subdued, cowed, and changed; that it had become a sort of superstitious wish with him to have the marriage legalised. This gave hope to Eleanor. But Ada, when questioned, merely said, with profound melancholy, and profound indifference, ‘What does it matter? If he married me fifty times, he cannot give me back any of the things that made me happy. I do not care what any one thinks or says. Father says he will remove from here, and let me live with him. That will do as well as anything.’ So firmly was she planted in this mind, that after a time they ceased to press it upon her, trusting to time to work a change. At the end of March she was still at the Dower House, seeing only Eleanor, Michael, and her father, who sometimes came to visit her. Mr. Dixon was a broken man now. His wife’s anger took a different shape from his; she would have had him sell his business and retire altogether from a place where they could never hold up their heads again. But the poor old man was not thus to be torn away from his child, or from the place where she was. Mrs. Dixon indignantly refused to see the baby; but her husband frequently stole up to the Dower House of an afternoon or evening, creeping timidly into the room where his daughter sat, and taking a place beside her. And here he used to nurse his little grandchild upon his knee, trying to disguise from Ada the delight he could not help taking in its looks and ways, as, when he had once or twice called her attention to them, she had looked at him and at the child, too, in a strange way, of which Eleanor took more notice than he did; and, warned by Michael, she was ever on her guard. But it was not written that Ada was to fulfil her lot in any way such as they sometimes dimly dreaded. Her thoughts strayed within her darkened mind, and as she saw the spring outside breaking around her, and beheld also the looks and gestures by which Michael and Eleanor sometimes betrayed, amidst all the gloom, that they loved, and were happy, Ada might have cried also— ‘Oh, dark, dark, dark, amidst the blaze of noon!’ Most likely, the intelligence of a certain order which her woe seemed to have developed in her, read their fears, and smiled at them. They thought she planned nothing for the future, any more than she revived at any sign in the present; but in this they were mistaken. CHAPTER XLI ‘LET ME ALONE’