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Updated: May 27, 2025
It was a little less dreary for Madaline when her mother was with her. Though they did not talk much, and had but few tastes alike, Margaret was all devotion, all attention to her child. She was sadly at a loss to understand matters. She had quite expected to find Madaline living at Beechgrove she could not imagine why she was alone in Winiston House.
"I have thought of a plan," he continued, "which can be easily carried out. On our estate not twenty miles from here there is a little house called the Dower House a house where the dowagers of the family have generally resided. It is near Winiston, a small country town. A housekeeper and two servants live in the house now, and keep it in order.
"There may possibly have been some slight misunderstanding between them which one little interview might remove," she thought. One day she invented some excuse for her absence from Winiston House, and started on her expedition, strong with the love that makes the weakest heart brave.
"It seems most probable," observed Lord Arleigh. "If I could arrive at any certainty as to her fate," said the earl, "I should be a happier man. I have been engaged to my cousin Lady Lily Gordon for four years, but I cannot make up my mind to marry until I hear something certain about my daughter." Winiston House was prettily situated. The house stood in the midst of charming grounds.
Then she saw that her anticipations were all wrong he preferred his dead ancestors to his living wife. She went back to Winiston House and took up the dreary round of life again. She might have made her lot more endurable and happier, she might have traveled, have sought society and amusement; but she had no heart for any of these things.
The servant replied that something strange had happened, but he could not tell what it was. He did not think there was anything seriously wrong. And then Lord Arleigh entered the house where the years of his young wife's life had drifted away so sadly. Lord Arleigh was shown into the dining-room at Winiston House, and stood there impatiently awaiting the Earl of Mountdean.
She offered no remark to the servants, and they offered none to her, but from casual observations she gathered that her daughter had never been to Beechgrove, but had lived at Winiston all her married life, and that Lord Arleigh had never been to visit her. How was this? What did the terrible pain in her daughter's face mean? Why was her bright young life so slowly but surely fading away?
Were Lord Arleigh twenty times a lord, he should not break his wife's heart in that cold, cruel fashion. A sudden resolve came to Mrs. Dornham she would go to Beechgrove and see him herself. It he were angry and sent her away from Winiston House, it would not matter she would have told him the truth.
What seemed to her even more surprising was that no one appeared to think such a state of things strange; and when she had been at Winiston some few weeks, she discovered that, as far as the occupants of the house were concerned, the condition of matters was not viewed as extraordinary.
They had a rapid drive, and reached Winiston House as it was generally called before eleven. Great was the surprise and consternation excited by so unexpected an arrival. The house was in the charge of a widow whose husband had been the late, lord's steward. She looked somewhat dubiously at Lord Arleigh and then at his companion, when they had entered. Madaline never opened her lips.
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