“I suppose I married him for the same reason as you married your chap, kid.  I suppose I was took with him, once.”

Marcella gathered her plates and teapot on the tray and stood at the door for an instant, visioning last night’s glamour ending in loathing, or in dull acceptance of misery and disappointment.

“I do feel sorry, Mrs. King,” she said, her eyes damp.

“I’m sorrier for you, kid,” said Mrs. King, attacking the shirt again.  “How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“And I’m nearly forty-nine.  I’ve got through thirty years of my misery, and you’ve all yours to come.  I’ve learnt not to care.  I go and have a bit of a splash at the Races when I’m pretty flush with money, and I have a glass or two of port with the boys sometimes, and get a laugh out of it.  You’ve got to learn these things yet, poor little devil.  But don’t you make the mistake I made and be too soft with him.”

Marcella shook her head.

“And—­I say, kid.  I go down on my bended knees every day and thank God I’ve got no kids of his—­”

“I think it’s a pity.  You must be so cold and lonely,” she said, seeing a resemblance between Mrs. King and Aunt Janet.

She had made the bed before she went down to cook the breakfast.  Louis was reading the paper and smoking, looking very well.  She hated to see him in bed now.

He ate his breakfast in silence, with the paper propped in front of him.  She pushed the window wide and, perched on the window-sill with a cup of tea outside and a piece of toast in her hand, she decided on what she was going to say to him.

“Louis,” she said at last, “I am a wretchedly dissatisfied sort of person, dear.”

He looked at her enquiringly and smiled.

“Louis, can you get up to-day and come out with me?”

He hesitated for a moment.  Then he sighed.

“My dear—­I don’t think it’s safe,” he said in a low voice.

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Well, then, it isn’t.  But I hate to see you lying here like this.  I want us to go and explore.  In that big garden by the waterside it’s gorgeous.  And—­there’s your work.”

He flushed a little, struggling with himself.  At last he said: 

“After all, it’s our honeymoon.  We can afford to slack a little.”

She laughed outright at that.  He could not see anything to laugh at.

“It isn’t enough for me—­slacking.  I hate it.  I want to do things just all the time.  I want to dig up fields and move hills about, and things like that.  Louis, don’t you think we might go up country and be squatters like uncle?”

“I wouldn’t mind being a squatter like your uncle,” he said, comfortably “with fifty quid notes to splash all over the shanty!  But you’re not getting tired of me, are you, darling—­after last night?” he added gently.  She flushed, and fidgeted perilously on the window-sill.