e simple tunes and songs he liked. And night after night she
was left alone, unapproached, uncalled for; or else Gervase stumbled in
from the dining-room or from an adjournment to the village tavern, where
he was the acknowledged king and emperor, bemussed, befumed, giddy,
hilarious, piteously maudlin, or deliriously furious. She stooped to
smile and answer his random ravings and to comply with his demands. If
she escaped actual outrage and injury in his house and hers, it was not
because she did not provoke him, for there was nothing in his wife which
Gervase hated so heartily, resented so keenly, as her refraining from
contradicting him. But below the grossness and sin of the poor lout and
caitiff there was a fund of sullen, latent manliness and kindness, which
held him back from insulting the defenceless woman--for all her pride
and purity--who was his wife, just as it had held him back from dallying
with and caressing her as his mistress.

The neighbourhood which had furnished both a dress-circle and a pit to
witness Diana's spectacle, was not astonished at the fate of the
adventure. Its success would have been little short of a miracle, and
these were not the days of faith in miracles; so the neighbourhood did
not pity Mrs. Gervase Norgate, for she had been foolhardy at the best,
and her fortune or misfortune had only been what ought to have been
expected. For that matter Mrs. Gervase Norgate would not have thanked
the world for its pity, though it had been lavishly vouchsafed.

There was one point on which Diana did not hesitate to contradict
Gervase, and persisted in contradicting him. She would not suffer him,
if she could help it, to frequent Newton-le-Moor, or to consort with Mr.
Baring. For to go to Newton-le-Moor was to go among the Philistines; and
lawless as Gervase was in his own person, it should never be with his
wife's consent that he should go and be plundered by her own flesh and
blood--his errors rendering him but a safer and a surer prey.

Gervase was standing restless and indignant by the low bow-window of his
wife's drawing-room, opening on the flower-garden, which had been laid
out in their honeymoon, and in which she continued to take pleasure,
though the wealth of glowing autumn geraniums and verbenas had given
place to the few frosted winter chrysanthemums. It was but the middle of
the day, and he had risen and had his cup of tea laced with brandy and
crowned with brandy, so that the jaded m