The vivid realisation of the situation seized upon her like a possession as she glanced sideways at her bridegroom and hurriedly glanced away again with a little hysterical shudder.  New York, good-tempered, lenient, free New York, was millions of miles away and Nigel was so loathly near and—­and so ugly.  She had never known before that he was so ugly, that his face was so heavy, his skin so thick and coarse and his expression so evilly ill-tempered.  She was not sufficiently analytical to be conscious that she had with one bound leaped to the appalling point of feeling uncontrollable physical abhorrence of the creature to whom she was chained for life.  She was terrified at finding herself forced to combat the realisation that there were certain expressions of his countenance which made her feel sick with repulsion.  Her self-reproach also was as great as her terror.  He was her husband—­her husband—­and she was a wicked girl.  She repeated the words to herself again and again, but remotely she knew that when she said, “He is my husband,” that was the worst thing of all.

This inward struggle was a bad preparation for any added misery, and when their railroad journey terminated at Stornham Station she was met by new bewilderment.

The station itself was a rustic place where wild roses climbed down a bank to meet the very train itself.  The station master’s cottage had roses and clusters of lilies waving in its tiny garden.  The station master, a good-natured, red-faced man, came forward, baring his head, to open the railroad carriage door with his own hand.  Rosy thought him delightful and bowed and smiled sweet-temperedly to him and to his wife and little girls, who were curtseying at the garden gate.  She was sufficiently homesick to be actually grateful to them for their air of welcoming her.  But as she smiled she glanced furtively at Nigel to see if she was doing exactly the right thing.

He himself was not smiling and did not unbend even when the station master, who had known him from his boyhood, felt at liberty to offer a deferential welcome.

“Happy to see you home with her ladyship, Sir Nigel,” he said; “very happy, if I may say so.”

Sir Nigel responded to the respectful amiability with a half-military lifting of his right hand, accompanied by a grunt.

“D’ye do, Wells,” he said, and strode past him to speak to the footman who had come from Stornham Court with the carriage.

The new and nervous little Lady Anstruthers, who was left to trot after her husband, smiled again at the ruddy, kind-looking fellow, this time in conscious deprecation.  In the simplicity of her republican sympathy with a well-meaning fellow creature who might feel himself snubbed, she could have shaken him by the hand.  She had even parted her lips to venture a word of civility when she was startled by hearing Sir Nigel’s voice raised in angry rating.

“Damned bad management not to bring something else,” she heard.  “Kind of thing you fellows are always doing.”