He had come in from his round of afternoon visits, and ran up-stairs in the expectation of finding his wife. She was not there, and he rang the bell. It was answered by Sarah, a damsel with rather an insolent face and a very fine cap worn behind instead of before.
“Is your lady not in?”
“Not yet, sir. She went out at three o’clock to pay visits.”
“On foot?”
“Oh no, sir. The carriage was ordered round from Green’s.”
The girl, finding she was not questioned further, retired, and Mr. Carlton walked to the window and stood looking from it, probably for his wife; his hands were in his pockets, and he was softly whistling. A certain sign with Mr, Carlton—the whistling—that he was deep in thought. Possibly the unpleasant idea that had crossed his mind once or twice of late, was crossing it again now—namely, that if he and his wife did not take care they should be outrunning their income. In good truth Laura possessed little more innate notion of the value of money than did her father, and she was extravagant in many ways in her new home from sheer heedlessness, where there was not the slightest necessity that she should be so at all, his very fact of ordering round one of Green’s carriages two or three times a week when she went to pay visits, was a superfluous expense, for Laura could just as well have gone on foot, her visits being generally to friends in the vicinity of home; when she paid them in the country it was with Mr. Carlton. Two, three, four hours, as the case might be, would Laura be out in that carriage, keeping it waiting at different doors for her while she was gossiping; and entailing a cost frequently of six, or eight, or ten shillings.
“Circumstances alter cases,” The trite old saying could not have received a more apt exemplification than in the instance of Mr. Carlton and his wife. It was not the most reputable thing that they had done—the running away to be married without leave or licence. More especially was it not so on the part of the young lady, and South Wennock would no doubt have turned the cold shoulder on her for a time, to show its sense of the irregularity, and vouchsafed her no visits, had she continued to be the obscure daughter of the poor post-captain. But Miss Laura Chesney was one person; the Lady Laura was another. That poor post-captain had become one on the proud list of British peers, and his daughter in right of her rank was the highest lady in all South Wennock. In fact there was no other whose social position in any degree approached to it. And South Wennock went but the common way of the world, when it obligingly shut its eyes to the past escapade, and hastened to pay its court to the earl’s daughter. The widow Gould had given it as her opinion at the inquest, you may remember, that Mr. Carlton’s “cabrioily” was an element in his success; but the probabilities were that Mr. Carlton’s bride would prove a greater one.
All the town—at least as much of it as possessed the right, or fancied they possessed it—flocked to pay court to the Lady Laura Carlton. Many of the county families, really of account, drove in to call upon her and Mr. Carlton; people who would never have dreamt of according him the honour, but that his new wife was a peer’s daughter. Had she been marshalled to church by her father and duly married, converted into a wife with the most orthodox adjuncts—three clergymen and twelve bridesmaids—her new friends could not have treated her with more deferential respect. Such is the world, you know. The Lady Laura Carlton was just now the fashion, and the Lady Laura was nothing loth to be so.
But, to be the fashion, entails usually certain consequences in the shape of expense. Dress and carriages cost something. Laura, with her innate carelessness, ordered both whenever inclination prompted, and Mr. Carlton was beginning to remember that they must be paid for. Passionately attached to his wife, he could not yet bear to give her a word of warning to be more heedful, but he wrote to his father, and solicited money from him. Not a sum of money down: he asked for something to be allowed him annually, a certain fixed sum that he named, hinting that the wife he had married, being an earl’s daughter, would cost him more to maintain suitably than a wife would, taken from an ordinary rank.
To this letter Mr. Carlton was daily expecting an answer. He had duly forwarded an account of his marriage to Mr. Carlton the elder, had written to him once since; but the senior gentleman had been remiss in the laws of good breeding, and had sent not so much as a single congratulation in return. In point of fact, he had not written at all. But Mr. Carlton was confidently expecting a reply to his third letter.
He had not to wait long. As he stood there at the drawing-room window, he saw the postman come up and turn in at the gate, selecting a letter from his bundle. There were two deliveries a-day from London, morning and evening; South Wennock, after a fight with the post-office powers, had succeeded in obtaining the concession at the beginning of the year. Mr. Carlton ran down with a step so fleet that