‘Fool that I am!’ he murmured. ‘Instead of giving up the marriage, I should do all in my power to urge it on. This woman in the background is——I wish she were out of the way. And yet, if I could marry them in spite of her.... A man and wife who live together in a hell-upon-earth _must_ have resort to a third person for help, and it should go hard if _I_ were not that third person. Upon my soul, I like the scheme. If Wellfield Abbey and the money of that insolent heretic who lives there now were once more under the control of the Church—it would be a meritorious act in whoever had brought it about—another jewel in Our Lady’s shrine, and,’ with a faint, sarcastic smile, ‘a step upwards for Pablo Somerville. The young man himself is a Wellfield. If I can make him act for our advantage, by playing upon that self of his, it is easy to bring out the whip afterwards, when he has gone too far to retreat.’ [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. ‘DON’T FRET.’ AUGUST was verging slowly towards September; the hues of the flowers were more gorgeous and more autumnal; the foliage of the trees had taken a soberer, more mature tinge. The weather was sultry and still, as it is wont at that time of the year to be. One afternoon, Nita Bolton, book in hand, and Speedwell by her side, paced slowly up and down the river walk, looking a little pale and drooping. Always soon and easily tired; never of the strong, robust temperament, she had looked of late more delicate than usual, and when questioned as to the reason of her heavy eyes and pale cheeks, had replied that ‘it was the heat—the sultry weather; the Abbey stood so low; and the end of the summer was, she was convinced, the most tiring and trying time of the whole year.’ She pooh-poohed all attempts to make her neglect any of her usual duties, and attended to both her outdoor and indoor tasks with unabated diligence; but the zeal, the pleasure in them was gone. Then her father proposed that they should go away on one of their usual tours—she and he and John—but Nita thought she would prefer to wait until later in the year: Wellfield was so beautiful now. When they did go away, she wished, she said, to go to the Italian lakes, and in a month later it would be time enough for that. Her word at home was a mandate, and her injunction was obeyed, though John, in his slow and deliberate manner, did remind her that there was a little touch of inconsistency between her two statements: first, that the Abbey lay so low, and that this was the most tiring and trying time of the whole year; and, second, that Wellfield was nicer now than at any other season. To which she answered, a little wearily, ‘How you quibble about things! I don’t want to go away from home. I hate changes.’