for her, and listened as she
departed.

CHAPTER XXIII

IN AMBUSH

Hitherto, Widdowson had entertained no grave mistrust of his wife. The
principles she had avowed, directly traceable as it seemed to her
friendship with the militant women in Chelsea, he disliked and feared;
but her conduct he fully believed to be above reproach. His jealously
of Barfoot did not glance at Monica's attitude towards the man; merely
at the man himself, whom he credited with native scoundreldom. Barfoot
represented to his mind a type of licentious bachelor; why, he could
not have made perfectly clear to his own understanding. Possibly the
ease of Everard's bearing, the something aristocratic in his
countenance and his speech, the polish of his manner, especially in
formal converse with women, from the first grave offence to Widdowson's
essentially middle-class sensibilities. If Monica were in danger at
all, it was, he felt convinced, from that quarter. The subject of his
wife's intimate dialogue with Barfoot at the Academy still remained a
mystery to him. He put faith in her rebellious declaration that every
word might have been safely repeated in his hearing, but, be the matter
what it might, the manner of Barfoot's talk meant evil. Of that
conviction he could not get rid.

He had read somewhere that a persistently jealous husband may not
improbably end by irritating an innocent wife into affording real
ground for jealousy. A man with small knowledge of the world is much
impressed by dicta such as there; they get into the crannies of his
mind, and thence direct the course of his thinking. Widdowson, before
his marriage, had never suspected the difficulty of understanding a
woman; had he spoken his serious belief on that subject, it would have
been found to represent the most primitive male conception of the
feminine being. Women were very like children; it was rather a task to
amuse them and to keep them out of mischief. Therefore the blessedness
of household toil, in especial the blessedness of child-bearing and all
that followed. Intimacy with Monica had greatly affected his views, yet
chiefly by disturbing them; no firmer ground offered itself to his
threading when he perforce admitted that his former standpoint was
every day assailed by some incontestable piece of evidence. Woman had
individual characters; that discovery, though not a very profound one,
impressed him with the force of something arrived at by independent
ob