She honestly believed herself to be doing right.
She was ill and unable to bear the whirl of fashion and gaiety. She
could not withdraw him from town to spend the gayest month of the year
in seclusion.
"Leave him to me, Hildegarde," said her cousin, Colonel Mostyn. "I will
pilot him safely through the rocks and deep waters; nothing makes a man
as self-reliant as feeling that he is trusted entirely."
And knowing that Colonel Mostyn was an elderly man, who knew about as
much as there was to know of life in all its phases, Lady Hildegarde had
no scruples.
The colonel and the young squire were most luxuriously established at
Roche House, the Carruthers' family mansion in Belgravia. Lady
Hildegarde made every arrangement for keeping up the establishment in
all bachelor's comforts. There was an excellent housekeeper, one who had
been at Ulverston Priory for many years.
"You will be able to give some good dinner-parties," she said to her
son; "bachelor dinners--bien entender--for Mrs. Richards is an excellent
housekeeper."
Assured and satisfied that all would go well, she left London. She
hesitated as to whether she should give her son any warning about love
or marriage, then decided that it would be quite useless.
"The boy is naturally so fastidious and refined," she thought; "he will
never love beneath him. He will see no one so nice as Marion."
So Lady Hildegarde Carruthers went to her stately home, little dreaming
of the fatal news that was to follow her.
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