t his wife should not be mixed up in the business of the school.
These things, in his opinion, lay entirely outside a woman's province.
Her place was in the drawing-room and her position that of a hostess
or, providentially, that of a mother. For the present there were no
signs of her fulfilling the latter.

In spite of Considine's discouragement her interest in Arthur was now
fully aroused, and more eagerly for the very reason of the limits which
her husband had set to her activities. Life at Lapton Manor to a
person of Gabrielle's essential vitality was dull. The nature of the
surrounding country with its near horizons and lack of physical breadth
or freedom imprisoned her spirit. Even Roscarna in its decay had been
more vital than this sad, smug Georgian manor-house set in its circle
of low hills. Over there, in winter, there had been rough Atlantic
weather, and a breath of ice from the snowy summits of Slieveannilaun
or the mountains of Maamturk. Here, even in their more frequent
sunshine, the air lay dead, ebbing like a sluggish river, from Dartmoor
to the sea. In winter the county families went to sleep like dormice,
so that no strange-calling conveyances passed the lodge-gates at
Lapton, and the life of Gabrielle was like that of those sad roses that
lingered on the south wall beneath her bedroom window in a state that
was neither life nor death. If she had shared Considine's interest in
his profession things might have been different. No doubt she would
have thrown herself into it with enthusiasm; but her enthusiasm was of
a very different nature from the steady flame that burned in Considine.
No doubt he knew this, and felt that her sharing would be disturbing by
its violence. In the ordinary course of events I suppose he expected
that she would have another child, but as this interest was denied her,
she was thrown more and more upon her own resources.

Her promise to Mrs. Payne gave her a reasonable excuse for her growing
interest in Arthur. She had never returned to the card-playing
incident; but as time went on a number of others equally distressing
presented themselves. Having constituted herself his special
protectress and the saviour of his reputation she tackled each of them
with courage. In every case she found herself baffled by the fact that
arguments which seemed to her unanswerable made no appeal to him, not
because he wasn't anxious to see things with her eyes, but because they
came