“It doesn’t matter,” answered Chiltern, carelessly, and stepped out into the garden.  He caught sight of her, hesitated the fraction of a moment, and as he came forward again the cloud in his eyes vanished.  And yet she was aware that he was regarding her curiously.

“What,” he said gayly, “still here?”

“It is too beautiful!” she cried.  “I could sit here forever.”

She lifted her face trustfully, smilingly, to his, and he stooped down and kissed it . . . .

To give the jealous fates not the least chance to take offence, the higher life they were to lead began at once.  And yet it seemed at times to Honora as though this higher life were the gift the fates would most begrudge:  a gift reserved for others, the pretensions to which were a kind of knavery.  Merriment, forgetfulness, music, the dance; the cup of pleasure and the feast of Babylon—­these might more readily have been vouchsafed; even deemed to have been bargained for.  But to take that which supposedly had been renounced—­virtue, sobriety, security, respect —­would this be endured?  She went about it breathlessly, like a thief.

Never was there a more exemplary household.  They rose at half-past seven, they breakfasted at a quarter after eight; at nine, young Mr. Manning, the farm superintendent, was in waiting, and Hugh spent two or more hours in his company, inspecting, correcting, planning; for two thousand acres of the original Chiltern estate still remained.  Two thousand acres which, since the General’s death, had been at sixes and sevens.  The General’s study, which was Hugh’s now, was piled high with new and bulky books on cattle and cultivation of the soil.  Government and state and private experts came and made tests and went away again; new machinery arrived, and Hugh passed hours in the sun, often with Honora by his side, installing it.  General Chiltern had been president and founder of the Grenoble National Bank, and Hugh took up his duties as a director.

Honora sought, with an energy that had in it an element of desperation, to keep pace with her husband.  For she was determined that he should have no interests in which she did not share.  In those first days it was her dread that he might grow away from her, and instinct told her that now or never must the effort be made.  She, too, studied farming; not from books, but from him.  In their afternoon ride along the shady river road, which was the event of her day, she encouraged him to talk of his plans and problems, that he might thus early form the habit of bringing them to her.  And the unsuspecting male in him responded, innocent of the simple subterfuge.  After an exhaustive discourse on the elements lacking in the valley soil, to which she had listened in silent intensity, he would exclaim: 

“By George, Honora, you’re a continual surprise to me.  I had no idea a woman would take an interest in these things, or grasp them the way you do.”