Edna indulged in no bitterness of resentment against her husband, except on the rare occasions when she, always unwillingly, remembered that chivalry and not love had prompted his offer of marriage to her. His frequent captiousness, his small verbal incivilities, his absence of any sympathy with her ideals, even his systematic reticence as to his personal thoughts and feelings, roused nothing in her beyond an appreciation of the opportunity that they provided for breadths of sunny-hearted charity. She was not an unhappy woman, and never made the mistake of calling herself one. Even the absence of children she regretted more for their own sakes than for hers, since she believed that her maternal instinct had become diverted into more universal and more spacious channels than could have been the case had it been exercised solely upon sons or daughters of her own.
That Sir Julian was "difficult" she never disguised from herself. He had, in fact, become rather more "difficult" year by year, and Edna had long since given up her early attempts to probe into his point of view. She came to the conclusion that Julian was inarticulate because he was unenlightened, that he liked "Jorrocks," and that he was permanently discontented because he had not enough to do and refused to envisage the deeper issues of life.
She reflected complacently sometimes that they had never had a quarrel—and remained unaware that the fact admirably measured the extent of their estrangement.
Lady Rossiter sighed at the end of her retrospect.
"Don't you like Miss Marchrose?" enquired Iris quite suddenly.
"But I wasn't thinking about her! What makes you ask?"
"I don't know," said Iris vaguely. "I've sometimes thought you didn't like her awfully much."
Lady Rossiter reflected before making any reply. She held the theory that the expression of an opinion should always be a well-considered matter, and was apt to say that words were like thistledown and might blow to unsuspected distances and in unforeseen directions.
There was, however, nothing of the airy quality of thistledown in her deliberately given answer.
"Miss Marchrose does not strike me as attractive," she said carefully, "but a young woman earning her own living is hardly to be judged by the rules that we should apply to one of nous autres. I never care to say that I dislike anyone—it seems to me so trivial, so short-sighted, to dislike the little that one can know of any fellow-creature. The Divine Spark is always lurking somewhere—although I admit that sometimes, in the less advanced, it is difficult really to hold fast to that belief."