Headworth was so childish and simple that she might easily have been
taken in by a sham ceremony. He said that he now saw he had done
very wrong in letting his mother-in-law take all the letters about
"that unhappy business" off his hands without looking at them, but he
was much engrossed by my mother's illness, and, as he said, it never
occurred to him as a duty to trace out what became of the poor thing,
and see that she was provided for safely. You know Mrs. Egremont
says laissez faire is our family failing, and that our first thought
is how _not_ to do it.'

'Yes, utter repudiation of such cases was the line taken by the last
generation; and I am afraid my mother would be very severe.'

'Another thing that actuated my father was the fear of getting his
brother into trouble with General Egremont, as he himself would have
been the one to profit by it. So I do not wonder so much at his
letting the whole drop without inquiry, and never even looking at the
letters, which there certainly were. I could not get him to begin
upon it with my uncle, but Mrs. Egremont was strongly on my side in
thinking that such a thing ought to be looked into, and as I had
found the paper it would be best that I should speak. Besides that
there was no enduring that Gregorio should be pretending to hold us
in terror by such hints.'

'Well, and has there been a wife and family in a cottage all this
time?'

'Aunt Margaret, he has never seen or heard of her since he left her
at Dieppe! Would you believe it, he thinks himself a victim? He
never meant more than to amuse himself with the pretty little