"No, I would rather go to Hartledon. In one's own home rest and comfort can be insured; and I believe I require them. Don't you wish to go there?" she added, watching his perplexed face. "No, I don't. The truth is, I cannot go to Hartledon." "Is it because you do not care to face the Ashtons? I see! You would like to have this business settled first." Lord Hartledon hardly heard the words, as he stood leaning against the open casement, gazing into the dark and misty past. No man ever shrank from a prison as he shrank from Hartledon. "I cannot leave London at all just yet. Thomas Carr is remaining here for me, when he ought to be on circuit, and I must stay with him. I wish you would go anywhere else, rather than to Hartledon." The tone was so painfully earnest, that a momentary suspicion crossed her of his having some other motive. It passed away almost as it arose, and she accused him of being unreasonable. Unreasonable it did appear to be. "If you have any real reason to urge against Hartledon, tell it me," she said. But he mentioned none--save that it was his "wish" not to go. And Lady Hartledon, rather piqued, gave the necessary orders on the following day for the removal. No further confidential converse, or approach to it, took place between her and her husband; but up to the last moment she thought he would relent and accompany her. Nothing of the sort. He was anxious for her every comfort on the journey, and saw her off himself: nothing more. "I never thought you would allow me to go alone," she resentfully whispered, as he held her hand after she was seated in the train. He shook his head. "It is your fault, Maude. I told you I could not go to Hartledon." And so she went down in rather an angry frame of mind. Many a time and oft had she pictured to herself the triumph of their first visit to Calne, the place where she had taken so much pains to win him: but the arrival was certainly shorn of its glory. CHAPTER XXII. ASKING THE RECTOR. Perhaps Lady Hartledon had never in all her life been so much astonished as when she reached Hartledon, for the first person she saw there was her mother: her mother, whom she had believed to be in some remote district of Ireland. For the moment she almost wondered whether it was really herself or her ghost. The countess-dowager came flying down the steps--if that term may be applied to one of her age and size--with rather demonstrative affection; which, however, was not cordially received. "What's the matter, Maude? How you stare!" "_Is_ it you, mamma? How _can_ it be you?" "How can it be me?" returned the dowager, giving Maude's bonnet a few kisses. "It _is_ me, and that's enough. My goodness, Maude, how thin you look! I see what it is! you've been killing yourself in that racketing London. It's well I've come to take care of you."