At the same time he endeavoured to impress her with the gravest sense of a married woman’s obligations.  His raptures, genuine enough, were sometimes interrupted in the oddest way if Monica chanced to utter a careless remark of which he could not strictly approve, and such interruptions frequently became the opportunity for a long and solemn review of the wifely status.  Without much trouble he had brought her into a daily routine which satisfied him.  During the whole of the morning she was to be absorbed in household cares.  In the afternoon he would take her to walk or drive, and the evening he wished her to spend either in drawing-room or library, occupied with a book.  Monica soon found that his idea of wedded happiness was that they should always be together.  Most reluctantly he consented to her going any distance alone, for whatever purpose.  Public entertainments he regarded with no great favour, but when he saw how Monica enjoyed herself at concert or theatre, he made no objection to indulging her at intervals of a fortnight or so; his own fondness for music made this compliance easier.  He was jealous of her forming new acquaintances; indifferent to society himself, he thought his wife should be satisfied with her present friends, and could not understand why she wished to see them so often.

The girl was docile, and for a time he imagined that there would never be conflict between his will and hers.  Whilst enjoying their holiday they naturally went everywhere together, and were scarce an hour out of each other’s presence, day or night.  In quiet spots by the seashore, when they sat in solitude, Widdowson’s tongue was loosened, and he poured forth his philosophy of life with the happy assurance that Monica would listen passively.  His devotion to her proved itself in a thousand ways; week after week he grew, if anything, more kind, more tender; yet in his view of their relations he was unconsciously the most complete despot, a monument of male autocracy.  Never had it occurred to Widdowson that a wife remains an individual, with rights and obligations independent of her wifely condition.  Everything he said presupposed his own supremacy; he took for granted that it was his to direct, hers to be guided.  A display of energy, purpose, ambition, on Monica’s part, which had no reference to domestic pursuits, would have gravely troubled him; at once he would have set himself to subdue, with all gentleness, impulses so inimical to his idea of the married state.  It rejoiced him that she spoke with so little sympathy of the principles supported by Miss Barfoot and Miss Nunn; these persons seemed to him well-meaning, but grievously mistaken.  Miss Nunn he judged ‘unwomanly,’ and hoped in secret that Monica would not long remain on terms of friendship with her.  Of course his wife’s former pursuits were an abomination to him; he could not bear to hear them referred to.