s we had at the last--while the girl was on
the way to Brindisi.

So, of course, for those three years or so, Leonora had many agitations.
And it was then that they really quarrelled.

Yes, they quarrelled bitterly. That seems rather extravagant. You
might have thought that Leonora would be just calmly loathing and he
lachrymosely contrite. But that was not it a bit... Along with Edward's
passions and his shame for them went the violent conviction of the
duties of his station--a conviction that was quite unreasonably
expensive. I trust I have not, in talking of his liabilities, given the
impression that poor Edward was a promiscuous libertine. He was not;
he was a sentimentalist. The servant girl in the Kilsyte case had been
pretty, but mournful of appearance. I think that, when he had kissed
her, he had desired rather to comfort her. And, if she had succumbed to
his blandishments I daresay he would have set her up in a little house
in Portsmouth or Winchester and would have been faithful to her for four
or five years. He was quite capable of that.

No, the only two of his affairs of the heart that cost him money were
that of the Grand Duke's mistress and that which was the subject of
the blackmailing letter that Leonora opened. That had been a quite
passionate affair with quite a nice woman. It had succeeded the one with
the Grand Ducal lady. The lady was the wife of a brother officer and
Leonora had known all about the passion, which had been quite a real
passion and had lasted for several years. You see, poor Edward's
passions were quite logical in their progression upwards. They began
with a servant, went on to a courtesan and then to a quite nice woman,
very unsuitably mated. For she had a quite nasty husband who, by means
of letters and things, went on blackmailing poor Edward to the tune of
three or four hundred a year--with threats of the Divorce Court. And
after this lady came Maisie Maidan, and after poor Maisie only one more
affair and then--the real passion of his life. His marriage with Leonora
had been arranged by his parents and, though he always admired her
immensely, he had hardly ever pretended to be much more than tender to
her, though he desperately needed her moral support, too....

But his really trying liabilities were mostly in the nature of
generosities proper to his station. He was, according to Leonora, always
remitting his tenants' rents and giving the tenants to understand that
the reduc