with every detail of Sir Robert Bingham's
property, and, young as she was, had already formed a scheme to make it
more productive after the old man's death.

They went to live in London, and there he found that Lady Honoria,
although by far too cold and prudent a woman to do anything that could
bring a breath of scandal upon her name, was as fond of admiration as
she was heartless. It seemed to Geoffrey that he could never be free
from the collection of young men who hung about her skirts. Some of them
were very good fellows whom he liked exceedingly; still, on the whole he
would have preferred to remain unmarried and associate with them at the
club. Also the continual round of society and going out brought heavier
expenses on him that he could well support. And thus, little by little,
poor Geoffrey's dream of matrimonial bliss faded into thin air. But,
fortunately for himself, he possessed a certain share of logic and
sweet reasonableness. In time he learnt to see that the fault was not
altogether with his wife, who was by no means a bad sort of woman in
her degree. But her degree differed from his degree. She had married for
freedom and wealth and to gain a larger scope wherein to exercise those
tastes which inherited disposition and education had given to her, as
she believed that he had married her because she was the daughter of a
peer.

Lady Honoria, like many another woman of her stamp, was the overbred, or
sometimes the underbred, product of a too civilized age and class. Those
primitive passions and virtues on which her husband had relied to make
the happiness of their married life simply did not exist for her. The
passions had been bred and educated out of her; for many generations
they have been found inconvenient and disquieting attributes in woman.
As for the old virtues, such as love of children and the ordinary round
of domestic duty, they simply bored her. On the whole, though sharp of
tongue, she rarely lost her temper, for her vices, like her virtues,
were of a somewhat negative order; but the fury which seized her when
she learned for certain that she was to become a mother was a thing that
her unfortunate husband never forgot and never wished to see again. At
length the child was born, a fact for which Geoffrey, at least, was very
thankful.

"Take it away. I do not want to see it!" said Lady Honoria to the
scandalised nurse when the little creature was brought to her, wrapped
in its long robes.