d blown itself away during the night, and the
sight of the sunbeams streaming through the windows made Geoffrey long
to be in the open air. He had no book at hand to read, and whenever he
tried to think his mind flew back to that hateful matrimonial quarrel.

It was hard on him, Geoffrey thought, that he should be called upon
to endure such scenes. He could no longer disguise the truth from
himself--he had buried his happiness on his wedding-day. Looking
back across the years, he well remembered how different a life he had
imagined for himself. In those days he was tired of knocking about
and of youthful escapades; even that kind of social success which must
attend a young man who was handsome, clever, a good fellow, and blessed
with large expectations, had, at the age of six-and-twenty, entirely
lost its attractiveness. Therefore he had turned no deaf ear to his
uncle, Sir Robert Bingham, who was then going on for seventy, when he
suggested that it might be well of Geoffrey settled down, and introduced
him to Lady Honoria.

Lady Honoria was eighteen then, and a beauty of the rather thin but
statuesque type, which attracts men up to five or six and twenty and
then frequently bores, if it does not repel them. Moreover, she was
clever and well read, and pretended to be intellectually and poetically
inclined, as ladies not specially favoured by Apollo sometimes
do--before they marry. Cold she always was; nobody ever heard of Lady
Honoria stretching the bounds of propriety; but Geoffrey put this down
to a sweet and becoming modesty, which would vanish or be transmuted
in its season. Also she affected a charming innocence of all vulgar
business matters, which both deceived and enchanted him. Never but once
did she allude to ways and means before marriage, and then it was to say
that she was glad that they should be so poor till dear Sir Robert died
(he had promised to allow them fifteen hundred a year, and they had
seven more between them), as this would enable them to see so much more
of each other.

At last came the happy day, and this white virgin soul passed into
Geoffrey's keeping. For a week or so things went fairly well, and then
disenchantment began. He learned by slow but sure degrees that his wife
was vain, selfish and extravagant, and, worst of all, that she cared
very little about him. The first shock was when he accidentally
discovered, four or five days after marriage, that Honoria was
intimately acquainted