In six or seven weeks! It seemed a very long time; but on receiving the lawyer’s letter announcing her husband’s departure, Maude had fancied that he was lost to her for ever. With what wonderful intelligence we can perceive the value of anything we have lost! In your daily walks, O modest collector of household treasures! you will see a little bit of china, a picture, an apostle spoon, a quaint old volume in a shop-window,--and, intending to look in and bargain for it some day when you have leisure, you will pass it a hundred times, indifferent as to its merits, half uncertain whether it is worth buying; but you discover some day that it is gone, and then in a moment the doubtful shepherdess becomes the rarest old Chelsea, the dirty-looking little bit of landscape an undeniable Crome, the battered silver spoon of unquestionable antiquity, the quaintly bound book a choice Elzevir. The thing is lost; and we regret it for all that it might have been, as well as for all that it was, and there are no bounds to the extravagance we would commit to regain the chance of possessing it. It was something after this fashion, perhaps, that Mrs. Tredethlyn regretted her husband, as she drove home disconsolately after her interview with the lawyer, to await the result of his clerk’s journey. She would have gone herself to Plymouth if she could have done any more than the clerk; but she had a dim belief that if there was infallibility anywhere on earth, it was to be found in the office of an old-established solicitor, and she thought that Mr. Kursdale’s accredited agent could not fail to effect some good. Her disappointment was very bitter the next day when she received a note from the solicitor, informing her that the _Kingfisher_ had sailed twelve hours before the clerk arrived at Plymouth. After this Maude could only await the result of her letter. Six or seven weeks seemed such a weary time as she looked forward to it; and it might be as long as that, or even longer, before any tidings from Francis could reach her. She went to her father, to pour her sorrows into his ear; but though he received her very affectionately, she could see that he blamed her severely for the folly which had driven Francis Tredethlyn from his home. She would have gone to stay at the Cedars during this dreary period; but she had a nervous dread of not being on the spot to receive any possible communication from her husband, so she remained amid the grand hotel-like splendour of the Stuccoville mansion; though her neighbours were daily departing for distant British watering-places, or on the first stage of continental wanderings, to toil amidst Alpine glaciers, or to lounge at German gaming-tables.