Brumley's sedulous attentions to these
hostel schemes with feelings, the kindlier elements of whose admixture
was a belief that ultimately he would write some elegant and respectful
approval of the established undertaking.

The entire admixture of Sir Isaac's feelings towards Mr. Brumley was by
no means kindly. He disliked any man to come near Lady Harman, any man
at all; he had a faint uneasiness even about waiters and hotel porters
and the clergy. Of course he had agreed she should have friends of her
own and he couldn't very well rescind that without something definite to
go upon. But still this persistent follower kept him uneasy. He kept
this uneasiness within bounds by reassuring himself upon the point of
Lady Harman's virtuous obedience, and so reassured he was able to temper
his distrust with a certain contempt. The man was in love with his wife;
that was manifest enough, and dangled after her.... Let him dangle. What
after all did he get for it?...

But occasionally he broke through this complacency, betrayed a fitful
ingenious jealousy, interfered so that she missed appointments and had
to break engagements. He was now more and more a being of pathological
moods. The subtle changes of secretion that were hardening his arteries,
tightening his breath and poisoning his blood, reflected themselves upon
his spirit in an uncertainty of temper and exasperating fatigues and led
to startling outbreaks. Then for a time he would readjust himself,
become in his manner reasonable again, become accessible.

He was the medium through which this vision that was growing up in her
mind of a reorganized social life, had to translate itself, as much as
it could ever translate itself, into reality. He called these hostels
her hostels, made her the approver of all he did, but he kept every
particle of control in his own hands. All her ideas and desires had to
be realized by him. And his attitudes varied with his moods; sometimes
he was keenly interested in the work of organization and then he
terrified her by his bias towards acute economies, sometimes he was
resentful at the burthen of the whole thing, sometimes he seemed to
scent Brumley or at least some moral influence behind her mind and met
her suggestions with a bitter resentment as though any suggestion must
needs be a disloyalty to him. There was a remarkable outbreak upon her
first tentative proposal that the hostel system might ultimately be
extended to married couple