The blinds were down at the Lawn. His own handsome bedchamber and
adjoining dressing-room faced the road, and it was at the windows of
these two rooms he looked. He fancied his weak foolish wife wailing and
lamenting behind those lowered blinds.
"And I shall have to endure her lamentations," he thought, with a
shudder. "I shall have no further excuse for avoiding her. But, on the
other hand, I shall have the pleasure of giving Mrs. Woolper and Miss
Paget notice to quit."
He derived a grim satisfaction from this thought. Yes; insolence from
those two women he would endure no longer. The time had come in which he
would assert his right to be master in his own house. The game had been
played against him boldly by Jedd and these people, and had been lost by
them. He was the winner. He could not dismiss doctors, nurse, friend,
lover. Charlotte Halliday's death made him master of the situation.
He went into his house with the determination to assert his authority at
once. Within all was very quiet. He looked into the dining-room--it was
quite empty; into the study--also empty. He went slowly upstairs,
composing his face into the appropriate expression. At the door of that
chamber which to him should have seemed of all earthly chambers the most
awful, he knocked softly.
There was no answer.
He knocked a little louder, but there was still no answer.
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