Anyway, after many months of married life, Guy was still as much in love with her as ever, and he was always profoundly touched by the pretty and impressive way in which she insisted that all the advantages were on her side, that she could never repay him sufficiently for the sacrifices he had so cheerfully made.
Of course Guy knew nothing of what his friends were saying; the men who admired her beauty, and were disappointed at the negative qualities which accompanied it; the women who found her unsatisfactory and were determined that she had something to hide.
All he knew, and was content in knowing, was this—that after many months of matrimony, for they had been married few weeks before the Armistice was proclaimed—that Armistice which was to be the precursor of a golden era—he was quite happy. She was a perfect wife, from his point of view, and he never looked back with the faintest misgiving. What he had done then, he would do again to-day, in spite of the fact that her reticence with regard to the past was as profound with him as with the various acquaintances who occasionally visited her.
Not even the close intimacy of married life had elicited any of those allusions and confidences which enable one to piece together, in some measure, the life-history of the person who makes them. But Guy had a generous nature, and was one of the least suspicious of men. He attributed this strange reticence to the fact that the past contained nothing but painful memories, that even to the man she loved she could not reopen the old wounds.
On this particular night, Lady Nina was awaiting her guests. It was a little dinnerparty to meet the young married couple, six in all, herself and father, Mr. and Mrs. Spencer, a young woman friend of the hostess, and an old friend of the Southleigh family, Hugh Murchison, already met with in the early chapters of this history.
Murchison was the first arrival. He walked with a slight limp, the result of a bad wound in the leg. He had been laid-up for a very long time at his own home with the effects of shell-shock. He had only been in London for a few days, and it was ages since the Southleighs had seen him. They welcomed him warmly.
After a little desultory conversation Nina spoke:
"You know from my note that you are here to-night especially to meet Guy and his wife, the wife that he sprang upon us in such a sudden and dramatic manner."
"Yes, I understood that. You know I have been out of the world so long, and more than half the time not in my right senses, that I had heard nothing of the details till, a day or two ago, I picked it up from club gossip. Then I was told that Guy had picked up a girl from nowhere, about whom nothing was known, and married her on the sly at a registry-office. I suppose it would be too unkind to assume that Guy had gone off his head?"
Lord Southleigh growled out from his easy-chair. "Of course he was off his head when he did it. And the devil of it is he seems just as much off his head now. They are like turtle-doves, my dear boy, after several months of marriage."