ady Loudwater finished her breakfast in the
sitting-room of her suite of rooms on the first floor. She was no longer
inattentive to Melchisidec.

During her breakfast she put all consideration of her husband's behaviour
out of her mind. As she smoked a cigarette after breakfast she considered
it for a little while. She often had to consider it. She came to the
conclusion to which she had often come before: that she owed him nothing
whatever. She came to the further conclusion that she detested him. She
had far too good a brow not to be able to see a fact clearly. She wished
more heartily than ever that she had never married him. It had been a
grievous mistake; and it seemed likely to last a life-time--her
life-time. The last five ancestors of her husband had lived to be eighty.
His father would doubtless have lived to be eighty too, had he not broken
his neck in the hunting-field at the age of fifty-four. On the other
hand, none of the Quaintons, her own family, had reached the age of
sixty. Lord Loudwater was thirty-five; she was twenty-two; he would
therefore survive her by at least seven years. She would certainly be
bowed down all her life under this grievous burden.

It was an odd calculation for a young married woman to make; but Lady
Loudwater came of an uncommon family, which had produced more brilliant,
irresponsible, and passably unscrupulous men than any other of the
leading families in England. Her father had been one of them. She took
after him. Moreover, Lord Loudwater would have induced odd reveries in
any wife. He had been intolerable since the second week of their
honeymoon. Wholly without power of self-restraint, the furious outbursts
of his vile temper had been consistently revolting. She once more told
herself that something would have to be done about it--not on the
instant, however. At the moment there appeared to her to be months to do
it in. She dropped her cigarette end into the ash-tray, and with it any
further consideration of the manners and disposition of Lord Loudwater.

She lit another cigarette and let her thoughts turn to that far more
appealing subject, Colonel Antony Grey. They turned to him readily and
wholly. In less than three minutes she was seeing his face and hearing
certain tones in his voice with amazing clearness. Once she looked at the
clock impatiently. It was half-past ten. She would not see him till
three--four and a half hours. It seemed a long while to her. However,
sh