At her husband's wish Lady Cecil went back amongst her old set. The season was a brilliant one, and she went out two or three times a-week. Sometimes with her aunt, often with Mrs. Lobyer; sometimes, but very seldom, with Mr. O'Boyneville. He wished her to be gay and happy; and she obeyed him. At first with reluctance; but by-and-by with a guilty pleasure. The words which Ruth spoke to Naomi contain the epitome of a wife's duty; and Cecil had long abandoned all hope of doing her duty in such a spirit. Her husband's people were not her people; his home was not her home. If she had been suffered to go her own way, she would have observed the letter of her duty; and the spirit would perhaps have come to her in due time. But a kind of fatality seemed to pervade her life; and the hand which should have sustained her within the quiet precincts of her home pushed her, with well-intentioned ruthlessness, out into the world. Hector Gordon came to London in April; and Lady Cecil met him very often. There were so many places at which they were likely to meet, and they were constantly meeting, though the Major paid no visit in Brunswick Square; whereupon the barrister condemned him as a snob, who did not care to risk his reputation by being seen in an unfashionable neighbourhood. Lady Cecil and Hector met very often. At first the icy reserve with which they accosted each other seemed an insuperable barrier, not to be broken down or worn away; but little by little this freezing coldness of manner gave place to a gradual thaw. Some chance allusion to the past, to a book read at Fortinbras, the subject of some old argument worn threadbare in those idle autumn days, carried them back all at once to something of the old intimacy; as it had been before the storm cloud of passion disturbed the serenity of their friendship. Mrs. MacClaverhouse was delighted to have her nephew with her again, and he came to Dorset Square as he pleased. If by a series of coincidences he happened generally to be there when Lady Cecil was with her aunt, the dowager was too frivolous and too much absorbed by her own pleasures and her own interests to be alarmed by the fact. She was very fond of Hector; and she knew that his return to England had brought her many things which were dear to her heart. Besides his usual tribute of Indian shawls and ivory caskets, the Major made his aunt many substantial and useful offerings. He begged her to recruit her exhausted cellar from the stores of his wine-merchant; and with his own pencil marked the choicer vintages in the merchant's catalogue. He presented the dowager with a stylish landau in place of the phantom chariot; and in divers manners enhanced that lady's comfort and respectability by his generosity.