manufactured mask vanish for whole minutes, to reveal a
petty egotism, giving way, regardless of appearances, to rage; he
clearly observed now the hard, preoccupied eyes. Nevertheless, the charm
which she exercised was undeniable. Her husband was permanently under
its spell. There he stood, near her, big, coarsening, good-natured,
content, proud of her. He mixed a cocktail and he threw a match into the
fire, in exactly the old Five Towns manner, which he would never lose.
But as for her, she had thrown off all trace of the Five Towns; she had
learnt London, deliberately, thoroughly. And even George, with the
unmerciful, ruthless judgment of his years, was obliged to admit that
she possessed a genuine pertinacity and had marvellously accomplished an
ambition. She had held John Orgreave for considerably over a decade; she
had had the tremendous courage to Leave the heavy provincial
manufacturer, her first husband; she had passed through the Divorce
Court as a respondent without blenching; she had slowly darned her
reputation with such skill that you could scarcely put your finger on
the place where the hole had been; and lo! she was reigning in Bedford
Park and had all she wanted--except youth. Nor did she in the least show
the resigned, disillusioned air of women who have but recently lost
their youth. She bore herself just as though she still had no fear of
strong lights, and as though she was still the dazzling, dashing blonde
of whom John in his earliest twenties used to say, with ingenuous
enthusiasm, that she was 'ripping'--the ripping Mrs. Chris Hamson. An
epical creature!

This domestic organism created by Mrs. John inspired George, and
instantly he was rapt away in dreams of his own future. He said to
himself again, and more forcibly, that he had a natural taste for luxury
and expensiveness, and that he would have the one and practise the
other. He invented gorgeous interiors which would be his and in which he
would be paramount and at ease. He positively yearned for them. He was
impatient to get back home and resume the long labours that would lead
him to them. Every grand adjunct of life must be his, and he could not
wait. Absurd to apprehend that Marguerite would not rise to his dreams!
Of course she would! She would fit herself perfectly into them,
completing them. She would understand all the artistic aspects of them,
because she was an artist; and in addition she would be mistress, wife,
hostess, commanding