“Rather. Everything!”
They arrived. She jumped out.
“Well, I’ll ring you up and tell you when I can go there and meet you. Good-bye! You are a nut!”
CHAPTER V
A HAPPY HOME
THE first six months after his marriage it used to give Nigel a thrill of gratification and vanity to go home to his house, one of the finest in Grosvenor Street, and splendidly kept up. Then he had suddenly grown horribly sick of it, longed for freedom in a garret, and now he associated it with no thrill of pride or pleasure, but with boredom, depression, quarrels and lack of liberty. Liberty! Ah! That was it; that was what he felt more than anything else. He had married for money chiefly to get liberty. One was a slave, always in debt—but it was much worse now. The master of the house lost all his vitality, gaiety and air of command the moment he came into the hall.
“Where’s Mrs. Hillier?”
“Mrs. Hillier is in the boudoir, sir.”
The boudoir was a little pink and blue Louis Seize room on the ground floor, opposite the dining-room. From the window Mary could watch for Nigel. That was what she always did. She hardly ever did anything else. Few women were so independent of such aids to idleness as light literature (how heavy it generally is!), newspapers, needlework or a piano. Few people indeed had such a concentrated interest in one subject. She was sitting in an arm-chair, with folded hands, looking out of the window. It was a point of vantage, whence she could see Nigel arrive more quickly than from anywhere else.
As soon as he caught the first glimpse of her at the window it began to get on his nerves. It was maddening to be waited for. …