ried 'an
ideal arrangement,' and foretold long years of success and happiness for
the happy pair.

At the club after the wedding the 'best man,' however, set forth a
different view of the matter.

'Of course on paper it's ideal,' he said; 'Sir William is of the order
of Melchisedec--having neither father nor mother, while Eric's pedigree
is the joy of the Heralds' College. Edith's money will pay off the
mortgages on Chesters Castle, no doubt, but, as Stevenson shrewdly said,
"_The Bohemian must not marry the Puritan._" Now Eric is not naturally a
marrying man; he yielded to his aged mother's solicitations and the
well-developed charms and black eyes of his wife. She sighs for a
career, and thinks Chesters Castle a fine foundation for it, but her
crest is a ladder; Eric's is a pierrot. In short, she is an Alpine
climber, and Eric a charming Prince Florizel of Bohemia. I give them a
year in which to find each other out--_apres cela le deluge_.'

The 'best man' proved right in his casting of their horoscope, for a
prolonged honeymoon spent in going round the world revealed a rift in
the lute which a season in town developed into an undoubted crack.

Thus, when Mrs. Chesters pressed on her husband the desirability of
entering Parliament, he protested that he had only seven skins; and when
she wished to pay a round of visits to distinguished people he
maintained that they ought to reside at Chesters Castle for a while.

She yielded, but her husband's castle completed her disillusion. She had
thought of it as a social _point d'appui_--she found it in her own words
'a gloomy shooting barrack.'

But her husband loved it, and rejoiced in the opportunity of renewing
his youth with the salmon-fishing, the grouse and blackcock driving, and
the great days of hunting on the wide moorlands of the Border, over
which his ancestors in bygone centuries had ridden day and night on raid
and foray. Mrs. Chesters could ride, had enjoyed the social advantages
of the Quorn and Pytchley, but she hated what she called disdainfully,
'bogtrotting with Picts and Scots.'

She had not yet become indifferent to her husband, but she was terribly
disappointed with his total lack of ambition.

Now that the salmon-fishing was over and the covers shot, she pined for
town, but her husband begged for a few more weeks of hunting first.

What joy could he find in the long days out on the barren fells? She
realised that he had become indifferent to her