Hubert noticed that folk were still asking for their seats, and pushing down the very rows in which the most influential critics were sitting.  They exchanged a salutation with their friends in the dress-circle, and, when they were seated, looked around, making observations regarding the appearance of the house; and all the while the actors were speaking.  Hubert trembled with fear and rage.  Would these people never give their attention to the stage?  If they had been sitting by him, he could have struck them.  Then a line turned into nonsense by the actress who played Mrs. Holmes was a lancinating pain; and the actor who played Captain Grey, played so slowly that Hubert could hardly refrain from calling from his box.  He looked round the theatre, noticing the indifferent faces of the critics, and the women’s shoulders seemed to him especially vacuous and imbecile.

The principal scene of the second act was between Mrs. Holmes and the man who had divorced her.  He has-been driven to drink by the vile behaviour of his second wife; he is ruined in health and in pocket, and has come to the woman he wronged to beg forgiveness; he knows she has learnt to love Captain Grey, but will not marry him, because she believes that once married always married.  There is only one thing he can do to repair the wrong he has done—­he will commit suicide, and so enable her to marry the man she loves.  He tells her that he has bought the pistol to do it with, and the words, ‘Not here! not here!’ escape from her; and he answers, ’No, not here, but in a cab.  I’ve got one at the door.’  He goes out; Captain Grey enters, and Mrs. Holmes begs him to save her husband.  While they are discussing how this is to be done, he re-enters, saying that his conscience smote him as he was going to pull the trigger.  Will she forgive him?  If she won’t, he must make an end of himself.  She says she will.

In the third act Hubert had attempted to paint Mr. Holmes’ vain efforts to reform his life.  But the constant presence of Captain Grey in the household, his attempts to win Mrs. Holmes from her husband, and the drunken husband’s amours with the servant-maid disgusted rather than horrified.  In the fourth act the wretched husband admits that his reformation is impossible, and that, although he has no courage to commit suicide and set his wife free, he will return to his evil courses; they will sooner or later make an end of him.  The slowness and deadly gravity with which Ford took this scene rendered it intolerable; and, notwithstanding the beauty of the conclusion, when the deserted wife, in the silence of her drawing-room, reads again Captain Grey’s letter, telling her that he has left England for ever, and with another, the success of the play was left in doubt, and the audience filed out, talking, chattering, arguing, wondering what the public verdict would be.