He went over all the district in those three days, dashing along the roads, hurrying from one hamlet to another. It was not the life he had been so foolish as to imagine to himself, the life--he felt himself blush hotly at the recollection--of the master of Bedloe, restoring the prestige of the old name, changing the aspect of the district, ameliorating everything as only (he thought) a man who was born the friend and master of the place could do. It had been an ideal life which he had imagined for himself, not one of selfishness. He had meant to brighten the very face of the country, to mend everything that needed mending, to do good to the poor people, who were his own people. He remembered now that there were those who thought it humiliating and base for a man to be enriched by his wife, and the subtle contempt of women embodied in that popular prejudice rose up in hot and painful shame to his heart and his face. A man is never so sure that women are inferior, as when a woman has neglected or played him false. Edward Langton’s heart was very sore, but he began to say to himself that it served him right for his meanness in depending on a woman, and that a man ought to be indebted to his own exertions and not look for advancement in so humiliating a way. These thoughts grew more and more bitter as the days went on. He flung himself into his work: an epidemic would have pleased him better than the mild little ailments or lingering chronic diseases which were the only visitations known among those healthy country folk; but such as they were he made the most of them, frightening the sick people by the unnecessary energy of his attendance, and saying to himself that this, and not a fiction of the imagination or anything so degrading as a wife’s fortune, was his true life. That he flew about the country without many a lingering unwilling look towards Bedloe, it would be false to say. His way wherever he went led him past the park gates, which he found always closed, silent, giving no sign. On the one occasion when Winifred perceived him descending the hill, by one of those hazards which continually arise to confuse human affairs, he, for the moment half-happy in the entrancement of a case which presented dangerous complications, did not see or recognise the little pony carriage lingering under the russet trees, and thus missed the only chance of a meeting and explanation; but he did meet, when that chance was over, next day, in the afternoon, Mr. Babington driving his heavy old phaeton from the gates of Bedloe. Langton’s heart gave a leap even at this means of hearing something of Winnie; but perhaps his pride would still have prevented any clearing up, had not the old lawyer taken it into his own hands. He stopped his horse and waited till Edward, who was walking home from the house of a patient in the village, came up.