'Well, indeed,' said Mrs. Chadwick, veering round at once, as she saw the position vastly improved, 'I am really delighted to hear it. Poor dear Lady Forestfield! When one imagines all that she must have gone through, it is quite delightful to think that she will be restored to her place in society again. I wonder whose influence brought that about?' Uffington was silent on this point. He knew by Eleanor's manner that she recognised his influence in the matter, and that was all he cared for. 'And so Lady Forestfield is to be received back by her husband,' said Mrs. Hamblin, with a cold smile, as she rose preparatory to taking her leave. 'What a very strange world we live in! I confess I cannot join my voice to your chorus of congratulations, for it appears to me that Lady Forestfield is no more respectable than she was before, and that Lord Forestfield has made himself contemptible.' CHAPTER XVI AT WOODBURN. The happy change which had come over Lady Forestfield's life had its effect in restoring her bodily health and, to a certain degree, her mental quietude. When Uffington first told her that her husband had consented to her taking up her abode at Woodburn she had ventured upon some slight objection. The place, beautiful as it was, had not, in her most favourable recollection of it, been what, according to her present idea, a home should be. It had been filled with people whom she never cared to see again, and had been the scene of many escapades, in which Mrs. Ingram, Lady Northaw, and their friends had played the principal characters, and the very memory of which was now repulsive to May. She had never known the place more than as one where, though nominally the mistress, she had really left all the arrangements to the housekeeper, and contented herself with the leading part in the follies which were perpetrated. And then there was the recollection of the last time she had visited Woodburn; that fatal night when, after having been spurned by her husband, she had sunk senseless on the door-step, and had been carried away, how she knew not. It was impossible, she thought, that she could go there; but Uffington firmly, but with great delicacy, urged her to reconsider this determination, pointing out the necessity of her being in her husband's house, and promising her, not merely the utmost respect and the acknowledgment of her proper position from the servants, which was guaranteed by Lord Forestfield's own written order, but the certainty of a quiet unmolested life.