“I should be the last to prevent you, old boy. But I’m sure you’ve often done it already and always made up your mind afterwards that she wasn’t quite up to the marrying mark.”
“Who wasn’t?”
“The other—horrid creature.”
He could not repress a chuckle.
“You’re deuced conceited,” he said.
“You’ve made me so.”
“I—how?”
“By marrying me first and adoring me afterwards.”
They had finished tea and were no longer preoccupied with cups and saucers. It was very bright in the room, very silent. Lord Holme looked at his wife and remembered how much she was admired by other men, how many men would give—whatever men are ready to give—to see her as she was just then. It occurred to him that he would have been rather a fool if he had yielded to his violent impulse and shut her out of the house the previous night.
“You’re never to speak to that cad again,” he said. “D’you hear?”