Everything went on very quietly at Oakley during these two years. Arthur’s visit at home was very brief, and not very lively. And if there was a temporary sense of relief in Lady Curtis’s mind to know that he had escaped from the influence of “those people” and “that young woman,” it soon disappeared in presence of Arthur’s melancholy looks, and in contemplation of the painful position of a man so young, who was married, and yet not married, and whose path, accordingly, could not but be full of thorns and troubles. Such a position is dangerous and difficult in any sphere; but how much more in that to which he was going, where every temptation of society would surround the young man, and every freedom would be accorded to him! The mother and sister had many a discussion over him; but how difficult it was to question him on the subject, to pry into those arrangements of his which he did not care to reveal, or to ask anything about the final causes of the separation! Arthur, for his part, did not speak on the subject; when he arrived, at first, he had let them know, in a few words, that his wife and he had parted. “Don’t ask me about it, for I can’t tell you. I don’t know how it is,” he had said to his mother. “She will not conform to my way of living, and I cannot conform to hers--that is all. There is no blame; but how it happened, don’t ask me, for I don’t know.” Lady Curtis respected the request absolutely, and inquired no more of him. But it is needless to say how interesting the subject was to her; and with what eagerness she endeavoured to get the information otherwise which Arthur would not furnish. Durant told her all that he knew personally, all that happened under his own eyes; but this was not much more satisfactory than Arthur’s silence. “He has an air of thinking that she was not so very much in the wrong after all,” Lady Curtis said. “I do not understand Lewis. You would almost think, from the letters he writes, that she had bewitched him too.” “I don’t think so,” Lucy said quickly, with a passing look upon her face which surprised her mother. “I don’t mean to say anything against her,” said Lady Curtis. “It is not to be supposed that she has any great fault. God forbid, Lucy! I did not mean that.”