It was hard on him, Geoffrey thought, that he should be called upon to endure such scenes.  He could no longer disguise the truth from himself—­he had buried his happiness on his wedding-day.  Looking back across the years, he well remembered how different a life he had imagined for himself.  In those days he was tired of knocking about and of youthful escapades; even that kind of social success which must attend a young man who was handsome, clever, a good fellow, and blessed with large expectations, had, at the age of six-and-twenty, entirely lost its attractiveness.  Therefore he had turned no deaf ear to his uncle, Sir Robert Bingham, who was then going on for seventy, when he suggested that it might be well of Geoffrey settled down, and introduced him to Lady Honoria.

Lady Honoria was eighteen then, and a beauty of the rather thin but statuesque type, which attracts men up to five or six and twenty and then frequently bores, if it does not repel them.  Moreover, she was clever and well read, and pretended to be intellectually and poetically inclined, as ladies not specially favoured by Apollo sometimes do—­before they marry.  Cold she always was; nobody ever heard of Lady Honoria stretching the bounds of propriety; but Geoffrey put this down to a sweet and becoming modesty, which would vanish or be transmuted in its season.  Also she affected a charming innocence of all vulgar business matters, which both deceived and enchanted him.  Never but once did she allude to ways and means before marriage, and then it was to say that she was glad that they should be so poor till dear Sir Robert died (he had promised to allow them fifteen hundred a year, and they had seven more between them), as this would enable them to see so much more of each other.

At last came the happy day, and this white virgin soul passed into Geoffrey’s keeping.  For a week or so things went fairly well, and then disenchantment began.  He learned by slow but sure degrees that his wife was vain, selfish and extravagant, and, worst of all, that she cared very little about him.  The first shock was when he accidentally discovered, four or five days after marriage, that Honoria was intimately acquainted with every detail of Sir Robert Bingham’s property, and, young as she was, had already formed a scheme to make it more productive after the old man’s death.

They went to live in London, and there he found that Lady Honoria, although by far too cold and prudent a woman to do anything that could bring a breath of scandal upon her name, was as fond of admiration as she was heartless.  It seemed to Geoffrey that he could never be free from the collection of young men who hung about her skirts.  Some of them were very good fellows whom he liked exceedingly; still, on the whole he would have preferred to remain unmarried and associate with them at the club.  Also the continual round of society and going out brought heavier expenses on him that he could well support.  And