e, so I have
been told, became what is called an altered being when he approached her
from the other side of a dancing-floor. Her eyes followed him about full
of trustfulness, of admiration, of gratitude, and of love. He was also,
in a great sense, her pastor and guide--and he guided her into what,
for a girl straight out of a convent, was almost heaven. I have not the
least idea of what an English officer's wife's existence may be like. At
any rate, there were feasts, and chatterings, and nice men who gave her
the right sort of admiration, and nice women who treated her as if she
had been a baby. And her confessor approved of her life, and Edward let
her give little treats to the girls of the convent she had left, and
the Reverend Mother approved of him. There could not have been a happier
girl for five or six years. For it was only at the end of that time
that clouds began, as the saying is, to arise. She was then about
twenty-three, and her purposeful efficiency made her perhaps have a
desire for mastery. She began to perceive that Edward was extravagant in
his largesses. His parents died just about that time, and Edward, though
they both decided that he should continue his soldiering, gave a great
deal of attention to the management of Branshaw through a steward.
Aldershot was not very far away, and they spent all his leaves there.

And, suddenly, she seemed to begin to perceive that his generosities
were almost fantastic. He subscribed much too much to things connected
with his mess, he pensioned off his father's servants, old or new, much
too generously. They had a large income, but every now and then they
would find themselves hard up. He began to talk of mortgaging a farm or
two, though it never actually came to that.

She made tentative efforts at remonstrating with him. Her father, whom
she saw now and then, said that Edward was much too generous to his
tenants; the wives of his brother officers remonstrated with her in
private; his large subscriptions made it difficult for their husbands
to keep up with them. Ironically enough, the first real trouble between
them came from his desire to build a Roman Catholic chapel at Branshaw.
He wanted to do it to honour Leonora, and he proposed to do it very
expensively. Leonora did not want it; she could perfectly well drive
from Branshaw to the nearest Catholic Church as often as she liked.
There were no Roman Catholic tenants and no Roman Catholic servants
except her