THE SECOND PART





CHAPTER V


After only one week of travelling in Scotland, my lord and my lady
returned unexpectedly to London. Introduced to the mountains and
lakes of the Highlands, her ladyship positively declined to improve
her acquaintance with them. When she was asked for her reason,
she answered with a Roman brevity, 'I have seen Switzerland.'

For a week more, the newly-married couple remained in London,
in the strictest retirement. On one day in that week the nurse
returned in a state of most uncustomary excitement from an errand on
which Agnes had sent her. Passing the door of a fashionable dentist,
she had met Lord Montbarry himself just leaving the house.
The good woman's report described him, with malicious pleasure,
as looking wretchedly ill. 'His cheeks are getting hollow,
my dear, and his beard is turning grey. I hope the dentist
hurt him!'

Knowing how heartily her faithful old servant hated the man who