A Group of Noble Dames | Page 8

return to nurse him. He thereupon
packed up and went off to his own place at Falls-Park.
Here he lived the life of a recluse for some time. He was still too
unwell to entertain company, or to ride to hounds or elsewhither; but
more than this, his aversion to the faces of strangers and acquaintances,
who knew by that time of the trick his wife had played him, operated to
hold him aloof.
Nothing could influence him to censure Betty for her share in the
exploit. He never once believed that she had acted voluntarily. Anxious
to know how she was getting on, he despatched the trusty servant
Tupcombe to Evershead village, close to King's-Hintock, timing his
journey so that he should reach the place under cover of dark. The
emissary arrived without notice, being out of livery, and took a seat in
the chimney-corner of the Sow-and-Acorn.
The conversation of the droppers-in was always of the nine days'
wonder--the recent marriage. The smoking listener learnt that Mrs.
Dornell and the girl had returned to King's-Hintock for a day or two,
that Reynard had set out for the Continent, and that Betty had since
been packed off to school. She did not realize her position as Reynard's
child-wife--so the story went--and though somewhat awe- stricken at
first by the ceremony, she had soon recovered her spirits on finding that
her freedom was in no way to be interfered with.
After that, formal messages began to pass between Dornell and his wife,
the latter being now as persistently conciliating as she was formerly
masterful. But her rustic, simple, blustering husband still held
personally aloof. Her wish to be reconciled--to win his forgiveness for
her stratagem--moreover, a genuine tenderness and desire to soothe his
sorrow, which welled up in her at times, brought her at last to his door
at Falls-Park one day.

They had not met since that night of altercation, before her departure
for London and his subsequent illness. She was shocked at the change
in him. His face had become expressionless, as blank as that of a
puppet, and what troubled her still more was that she found him living
in one room, and indulging freely in stimulants, in absolute
disobedience to the physician's order. The fact was obvious that he
could no longer be allowed to live thus uncouthly.
So she sympathized, and begged his pardon, and coaxed. But though
after this date there was no longer such a complete estrangement as
before, they only occasionally saw each other, Dornell for the most part
making Falls his headquarters still.
Three or four years passed thus. Then she came one day, with more
animation in her manner, and at once moved him by the simple
statement that Betty's schooling had ended; she had returned, and was
grieved because he was away. She had sent a message to him in these
words: 'Ask father to come home to his dear Betty.'
'Ah! Then she is very unhappy!' said Squire Dornell.
His wife was silent.
''Tis that accursed marriage!' continued the Squire.
Still his wife would not dispute with him. 'She is outside in the
carriage,' said Mrs. Dornell gently.
'What--Betty?'
'Yes.'
'Why didn't you tell me?' Dornell rushed out, and there was the girl
awaiting his forgiveness, for she supposed herself, no less than her
mother, to be under his displeasure.
Yes, Betty had left school, and had returned to King's-Hintock. She was
nearly seventeen, and had developed to quite a young woman. She

looked not less a member of the household for her early marriage-
contract, which she seemed, indeed, to have almost forgotten. It was
like a dream to her; that clear cold March day, the London church, with
its gorgeous pews, and green-baize linings, and the great organ in the
west gallery--so different from their own little church in the shrubbery
of King's-Hintock Court--the man of thirty, to whose face she had
looked up with so much awe, and with a sense that he was rather ugly
and formidable; the man whom, though they corresponded politely, she
had never seen since; one to whose existence she was now so
indifferent that if informed of his death, and that she would never see
him more, she would merely have replied, 'Indeed!' Betty's passions as
yet still slept.
'Hast heard from thy husband lately?' said Squire Dornell, when they
were indoors, with an ironical laugh of fondness which demanded no
answer.
The girl winced, and he noticed that his wife looked appealingly at him.
As the conversation went on, and there were signs that Dornell would
express sentiments that might do harm to a position which they could
not alter, Mrs. Dornell suggested that Betty should leave the room till
her father and herself had finished their private conversation; and