“I notice that they didn’t invite us to sit down and have a bite,” he said.  “I call that kind of inhospitable.”

“It was ’is lordship himself!” exclaimed the guide, scandalized.

“You don’t say!” drawled our fellow-countryman.  “I guess I owe you another shilling, my friend.”

The guide, utterly bewildered, accepted it.  The transatlantic point of view towards the nobility was beyond him.

“His lordship could make a nice little income if he set up as a side show,” added the Ohioan.

Maude giggled, but I was furious.  And no sooner were we outside the gates than I declared I should never again enter a private residence by the back door.

“Why, Hugh, how queer you are sometimes,” she said.

“I maybe queer, but I have a sense of fitness,” I retorted.

She asserted herself.

“I can’t see what difference it makes.  They didn’t know us.  And if they admit people for money—­”

“I can’t help it.  And as for the man from Ohio—­”

“But he was so funny!” she interrupted.  “And he was really very nice.”

I was silent.  Her point of view, eminently sensible as it was, exasperated me.  We were leaning over the parapet of a little-stone bridge.  Her face was turned away from me, but presently I realized that she was crying.  Men and women, villagers, passing across the bridge, looked at us curiously.  I was miserable, and somewhat appalled; resentful, yet striving to be gentle and conciliatory.  I assured her that she was talking nonsense, that I loved her.  But I did not really love her at that moment; nor did she relent as easily as usual.  It was not until we were together in our sitting-room, a few hours later, that she gave in.  I felt a tremendous sense of relief.

“Hugh, I’ll try to be what you want.  You know I am trying.  But don’t kill what is natural in me.”

I was touched by the appeal, and repentant...

It is impossible to say when the little worries, annoyances and disagreements began, when I first felt a restlessness creeping over me.  I tried to hide these moods from her, but always she divined them.  And yet I was sure that I loved Maude; in a surprisingly short period I had become accustomed to her, dependent on her ministrations and the normal, cosy intimacy of our companionship.  I did not like to think that the keen edge of the enjoyment of possession was wearing a little, while at the same time I philosophized that the divine fire, when legalized, settles down to a comfortable glow.  The desire to go home that grew upon me I attributed to the irritation aroused by the spectacle of a fixed social order commanding such unquestioned deference from the many who were content to remain resignedly outside of it.  Before the setting in of the Liberal movement and the “American invasion” England was a country in which (from my point of view) one must be “somebody” in order to be happy.  I was “somebody” at home; or at least rapidly becoming so....