There was a little embrace, and then Susan opened the gate and Maude tripped away. The vulgar gravel seemed like empyreal air under her high-heeled boots this time; so changed were her feelings since she had discovered how deeply she had wronged her husband by the shapeless jealousies that Harcourt Lowther had inspired in her breast. Julia looked with astonishment at her friend’s altered countenance as Maude apologized for the length of her absence, while the _blasé_ footman let down the steps; she was still more astonished when the carriage drove townwards, and Maude gushed into French, to the discomfiture of the footman, who had a habit of looking behind him for imaginary vehicles when his mistress’s conversation happened to interest him. In French, Maude informed Julia that the mythic rival had melted into a “little cousin,” who was “all that there is of the most charming,” “an all young girl,” “a candid angel,” whom Mrs. Tredethlyn was ready to take to her heart forthwith. Julia found it a great deal harder to sympathize with Maude’s happiness than with her misery. But the happiness did not last very long; for on inquiry at Stuccoville, Maude found that her husband had not been home; and on penetrating Holborn-wards to Gray’s Inn, to the disgust of the languid footman, she met with a second disappointment in the offices of Messrs. Kursdale and Scardon, who had heard nothing of the absent Mr. Tredethlyn. After this Maude drove homewards with a very sad countenance, and was glad to shrink from even Julia’s sympathy, and to hide herself in her own rooms, where she paced disconsolately to and fro, listening for the crunching wheels, and banging door of a hansom cab, and stopping every now and then to look hopelessly out into the monotonous street. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXXVIII. GONE. All through the dreary day, and far into the still more dreary night, Maude Tredethlyn waited and listened for her husband’s coming. She could not believe that he would hold to the purpose so earnestly expressed in his letter. His resolution had no doubt been fixed as the Monument itself while he wrote, for he had written immediately after his wife’s unjustifiable denunciation of him; but surely long before the time came for action Francis Tredethlyn’s purpose would waver, and the faithful slave would come back to his place at the feet of his mistress. In any case he would surely seek some explanation of Maude’s anger. “He never could be so cruel as to leave me because of a few foolish words,” thought Mrs. Tredethlyn; “he could not be so unjust as not to give me the opportunity of explaining myself.”