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Presently, when she had lain down, affecting to wake, he asked her some trivial questions. 'Yes, Edmond, she replied absently. Lord Uplandtowers became convinced that she was in the habit of leaving the chamber in this queer way more frequently than he had observed, and he determined to watch.
To pass the time of her absence, Lord Uplandtowers went into a little room adjoining the long gallery, where some elderly ones were sitting by the fire for he had a phlegmatic dislike of dancing for its own sake, and, lifting the window-curtains, he looked out of the window into the park and wood, dark now as a cavern.
Lord Uplandtowers was a subtle man when once he set himself to strategy; though in the present instance he never thought of the simple stratagem of constant tenderness. Nor did he enter the room and surprise his wife as a blunderer would have done, but went back to his chamber as silently as he had left it.
The mutilated features of Willowes had disappeared from her mind's eye; this perfect being was really the man she had loved, and not that later pitiable figure; in whom love and truth should have seen this image always, but had not done so. It was not till Lord Uplandtowers said roughly, 'Are you going to stay here all the morning worshipping him? that she roused herself.
It was only a few days later that a waggon with two horses, containing an immense packing-case, was seen at breakfast-time both by Barbara and her husband to drive round to the back of the house, and by-and-by they were informed that a case labelled 'Sculpture' had arrived for her ladyship. 'What can that be? said Lord Uplandtowers.
Lord Uplandtowers' eye fell upon the newly-painted door where the recess had formerly been. 'You have been carpentering in my absence then, Barbara, he said carelessly. 'Yes, Uplandtowers. 'Why did you go putting up such a tasteless enclosure as that spoiling the handsome arch of the alcove? 'I wanted more closet-room; and I thought that as this was my own apartment 'Of course, he returned.
'Phoebus-Apollo, sure, said the Earl of Uplandtowers, who had never seen Willowes, real or represented, till now. Barbara did not hear him. She was standing in a sort of trance before the first husband, as if she had no consciousness of the other husband at her side.
A poor man in the town nearest to Knollingwood Hall, who combined the art of sign-painting with ingenious mechanical occupations, was sent for by Lord Uplandtowers to come to the Hall on a day in that week when the Countess had gone on a short visit to her parents.
She had taken this extreme step because she loved her dear Edmond as she could love no other man, and because she had seen closing round her the doom of marriage with Lord Uplandtowers, unless she put that threatened fate out of possibility by doing as she had done.
After some general conversation on the school and its progress, the visitor observed that he believed the schoolmaster had once travelled a good deal with the unfortunate Mr. Willowes, and had been with him on the occasion of his accident. He, Lord Uplandtowers, was interested in knowing what had really happened at that time, and had often thought of inquiring.
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