thus, little by little, poor Geoffrey’s dream of matrimonial bliss faded into thin air.  But, fortunately for himself, he possessed a certain share of logic and sweet reasonableness.  In time he learnt to see that the fault was not altogether with his wife, who was by no means a bad sort of woman in her degree.  But her degree differed from his degree.  She had married for freedom and wealth and to gain a larger scope wherein to exercise those tastes which inherited disposition and education had given to her, as she believed that he had married her because she was the daughter of a peer.

Lady Honoria, like many another woman of her stamp, was the overbred, or sometimes the underbred, product of a too civilized age and class.  Those primitive passions and virtues on which her husband had relied to make the happiness of their married life simply did not exist for her.  The passions had been bred and educated out of her; for many generations they have been found inconvenient and disquieting attributes in woman.  As for the old virtues, such as love of children and the ordinary round of domestic duty, they simply bored her.  On the whole, though sharp of tongue, she rarely lost her temper, for her vices, like her virtues, were of a somewhat negative order; but the fury which seized her when she learned for certain that she was to become a mother was a thing that her unfortunate husband never forgot and never wished to see again.  At length the child was born, a fact for which Geoffrey, at least, was very thankful.

“Take it away.  I do not want to see it!” said Lady Honoria to the scandalised nurse when the little creature was brought to her, wrapped in its long robes.

“Give it to me, nurse—­I do,” said her husband.

From that moment Geoffrey gave all the pent-up affection of his bruised soul to this little daughter, and as the years went on they grew very dear to each other.  But an active-minded, strong-hearted, able-bodied man cannot take a babe as the sole companion of his existence.  Probably Geoffrey would have found this out in time, and might have drifted into some mode of life more or less undesirable, had not an accident occurred to prevent it.  In his dotage, Geoffrey’s old uncle Sir Robert Bingham fell a victim to the wiles of an adventuress and married her.  Then he promptly died, and eight months afterwards a posthumous son was born.

To Geoffrey this meant ruin.  His allowance stopped and his expectations vanished at one fell swoop.  He pulled himself together, however, as a brave-hearted man does under such a shock, and going to his wife he explained to her that he must now work for his living, begging her to break down the barrier that was between them and give him her sympathy and help.  She met him with tears and reproaches.  The one thing that touched her keenly, the one thing which she feared and hated was poverty, and all that poverty means to women of her rank and nature.  But there was no help for it; the charming house in Bolton Steet had to be given up, and purgatory must be faced, in a flat, near the Edgware Road.  Lady Honoria was miserable, indeed had it not been that fortunately for herself she possessed plenty of relations more or less grand, whom she might continually visit for weeks and even for months at a stretch, she could scarcely have endured her altered life.