payment of her father's heavy debts. He was right and admirable, it could
not be contested; but the prospect for them was a grinding gloom, an
unrelieved drag, as of a coach at night on an interminable uphill flinty
road.

These were her sensations, and she found it diverting to be admired;
admired by many while she knew herself to be absorbed in the possession
of her by one. It bestowed the before and after of her marriage. She felt
she was really, had rapidly become, the young woman of the world, armed
with a husband, to take the flatteries of men for the needed diversion
they brought. None moved her; none could come near to touching the happy
insensibility of a wife who adored her husband, wrote to him daily,
thought of him by the minute. Her former worshippers were numerous at
Livia's receptions; Lord Fleetwood, Lord Brailstone, and the rest. Odd to
reflect on--they were the insubstantial but coveted wealth of the woman
fallen upon poverty, ignoble poverty! She could not discard her wealth.
She wrote amusingly of them, and fully, vivacious descriptions, to
Chillon; hardly so much writing to him as entering her heart's barred
citadel, where he resided at his ease, heard everything that befell about
her. If she dwelt on Lord Fleetwood's kindness in providing
entertainments, her object was to mollify Chillon's anger in some degree.
She was doing her utmost to gratify him, 'for the purpose of paving a way
to plead Janey's case.' She was almost persuading herself she was
enjoying the remarks of his friend, confidant, secretary, or what not,
Livia's worshipper, Mr. Woodseer, 'who does as he wills with my lord;
directs his charities, his pleasures, his opinions, all because he is
believed to have wonderful ideas and be wonderfully honest.' Henrietta
wrote: 'Situation unchanged. Janey still At that place'; and before the
letter was posted, she and Livia had heard from Gower Woodseer of the
reported disappearance of the Countess of Fleetwood and her maid. Gower's
father had walked up from Whitechapel, bearing news of it to the earl,
she said.

'And the earl is much disturbed?' was Livia's inquiry.

'He has driven down with my father,' Gower said carelessly, ambiguously
in the sound.

Troubled enough to desire the show of a corresponding trouble, Henrietta
read at their faces.

'May it not be--down there--a real danger?'

The drama, he could inform her, was only too naked down there for
disappearances to be common.