Had she but known, her own demeanour was much more surprising to him than his could be to her. He was wondering when an outburst of wounded vanity would come, how much longer she could refrain from comment upon his behaviour. Surely she must be piqued beyond endurance, she who imagined herself to have captured his heart at a glance, and was doubtless pondering the question of exactly what her conquest represented, in money, luxury, and pleasure.
His seemingly absorbed attention had, as a fact, hardly wandered from her for an instant since they met that morning; and the results of his observations were not according to his expectation. So far, she had not merely been pliant, she had seemed grateful for kindness. Of course he knew her to be badly frightened. At the Savoy, for a few minutes, under the influence of gay surroundings and champagne, there had been, as he thought, a glimpse of the real woman—the coquette incarnate. It had vanished, however, the moment he set his heavy hand thereon.
Now she sat before him in her Dresden china daintiness, a picture of luxury, carefully tended down to her very finger-nails. While she slept he had perused the features that moved him so vitally—the well remembered breadth of brow and pointedness of chin, the deep setting of the shadowy eyes, the lines of the throat, the base of which rose milky from its setting of misty chiffon.
As soon as she stirred, he returned to his blue foolscap. Now she was returning his compliment—studying him.
Reluctantly she found that experience was confirming the judgment she had formed instantaneously at Hertford House. She did not like her husband's face, and could hardly say why this was so, since in a virile, somewhat rough-hewn fashion, his features were good. She was just saying to herself, "It is the expression that is wrong; it must be the expression," when he raised his head, met her eyes, and smiled in the way she was learning to dislike.
"Well, don't you think I am an ideal husband?" he asked.
She answered his smile. "That remains to be seen," she countered.
"At least," he said, "I fulfil the one essential condition, don't I? The one thing needful for husbands?"
"What is that?"
"Why, a long purse, of course."