mother, as to admit such an enemy to your
house--one so obviously your evil genius--much less accept him as a
husband, after so long? If you had only told me all, I could have
advised you better! But I suppose I have no right to reproach him,
bitter as I feel, and even though he has blighted my life for ever!'

'Frances, I did hold out; I saw it was a mistake to have any more to say
to a man who had been such an unmitigated curse to me! But he would not
listen; he kept on about his conscience and mine, till I was bewildered,
and said Yes! . . . Bringing us away from a quiet town where we were
known and respected--what an ill-considered thing it was! O the content
of those days! We had society there, people in our own position, who did
not expect more of us than we expected of them. Here, where there is so
much, there is nothing! He said London society was so bright and
brilliant that it would be like a new world. It may be to those who are
in it; but what is that to us two lonely women; we only see it flashing
past! . . . O the fool, the fool that I was!'

Now Millborne was not so soundly asleep as to prevent his hearing these
animadversions that were almost execrations, and many more of the same
sort. As there was no peace for him at home, he went again to his club,
where, since his reunion with Leonora, he had seldom if ever been seen.
But the shadow of the troubles in his household interfered with his
comfort here also; he could not, as formerly, settle down into his
favourite chair with the evening paper, reposeful in the celibate's sense
that where he was his world's centre had its fixture. His world was now
an ellipse, with a dual centrality, of which his own was not the major.

The young curate of Ivell still held aloof, tantalizing Frances by his
elusiveness. Plainly he was waiting upon events. Millborne bore the
reproaches of his wife and daughter almost in silence; but by degrees he
grew meditative, as if revolving a new idea. The bitter cry about
blighting their existence at length became so impassioned that one day
Millborne calmly proposed to return again to the country; not necessarily
to Exonbury, but, if they were willing, to a little old manor-house which
he had found was to be let, standing a mile from Mr. Cope's town of
Ivell.

They were surprised, and, despite their view of him as the bringer of
ill, were disposed to accede. 'Though I suppose,' said Mrs. Millborne to
him, 'it will e