He needed solitude on this particular afternoon. He had had a completely unexpected letter that morning from the Marquess of Hetherington. It had been a painful experience breaking the seal, knowing from whom the letter had come. They were in Sussex for the summer awaiting the already overdue birth of their first child. Mainwaring had put down the letter at that point, finding that his hand was shaking. When he took it up again, it was to find that this was by no means the first letter Robert had sent him. Others had gone to Ferndale, to Mainwaring's former address in London, even to White's Club. Both Hetherington and Elizabeth had been puzzled and a little hurt by his silence.

"We keep telling ourselves that perhaps these letters have not reached you," the marquess had written, "and we cling to the hope that this is so, because we do not like to think what your silence might mean otherwise. However, Prosser called on us a few days ago while on a journey west and we have finally discovered from him exactly where you may be found. You can have no idea how elusive you are, my friend.

"Let me repeat yet again what I have written in every letter to you. Both Elizabeth and I grieve over the lapse in our friendship and both of us have a very real sense of our own guilt. Can you forgive me for the way I treated you when we last met? I have long been sensible of the fact-indeed, I knew it even at the time -that your intentions were perfectly honorable and your behavior above reproach. I can excuse myself only with the explanation that I was an extremely jealous husband.

"What I should have explained, of course, is that I loved Elizabeth perhaps more than was good for me at the time.