Robert delighted in it so
far as his East End life allowed him to have it. No one was ever more
ready to take other men and women at their own valuation than he.
Nothing was so easy to him as to believe in other people's goodness, or
cleverness, or superhuman achievement. On the other hand, London is kind
to such men as Robert Elsmere. His talk, his writing, were becoming
known and relished; and even the most rigid of the old school found it
difficult to be angry with him. His knowledge of the poor and of social
questions attracted the men of actions; his growing historical
reputation drew the attention of the men of thought. Most people wished
to know him and to talk to him, and Catherine, smiled upon for his
sake, and assumed to be his chief disciple, felt herself more and more
bewildered and antagonistic as the season rushed on.

For what pleasure could she get out of these dinners and these evenings,
which supplied Robert with so much intellectual stimulus? With her all
the moral nerves were jarring and out of tune. At any time Richard
Leyburn's daughter would have found it hard to tolerate a society where
everything is an open question and all confessions of faith are more or
less bad taste. But now, when there was no refuge to fall back upon in
Robert's arms, no certainty of his sympathy--nay, a certainty that,
however tender and pitiful he might be, he would still think her wrong
and mistaken! She went here and there obediently because he wished; but
her youth seemed to be ebbing, the old Murewell gaiety entirely left
her, and people in general wondered why Elsmere should have married a
wife older than himself, and apparently so unsuited to him in
temperament.

Especially was she tried at Madame de Netteville's. For Robert's sake
she tried for a time to put aside her first impression and to bear
Madame de Netteville's evenings--little dreaming, poor thing, all the
time that Madame de Netteville thought her presence at the famous
'Fridays' an incubus only to be put up with because the husband was
becoming socially an indispensable.

But after two or three Fridays Catherine's endurance failed her. On the
last occasion she found herself late in the evening hemmed in behind
Madame de Netteville and a distinguished African explorer, who was the
lion of the evening. Eugenie de Netteville had forgotten her silent
neighbour, and presently, with some biting little phrase or other, she
asked the great man his opinion on