Why has your wife left you
here, and gone to London by herself?"
They were down at the fence again as she made that last inquiry, and
they waited, leaning against it, while Noel Vanstone answered. Her
reiterated assurances that she bore him no malice were producing their
effect; he was beginning to recover himself. The old helpless habit of
addressing all his complaints to his housekeeper was returning already
with the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecount--returning insidiously, in
company with that besetting anxiety to talk about his grievances, which
had got the better of him at the breakfast-table, and which had shown
the wound inflicted on his vanity to his wife's maid.
"I can't answer for Mrs. Noel Vanstone," he said, spitefully. "Mrs. Noel
Vanstone has not treated me with the consideration which is my due. She
has taken my permission for granted, and she has only thought proper to
tell me that the object of her journey is to see her friends in London.
She went away this morning without bidding me good-by. She takes her own
way as if I was nobody; she treats me like a child. You may not believe
it, Lecount, but I don't even know who her friends are.
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