s had never come about his house since his marriage.
There had been something in Diana which had held them at arm's length;
and although they had heard and scoffed at her fall, they had not the
wit to discern that it clean removed the obstacle to their harbouring
about the place as they had done before her reign and abdication. They
might come and go now by day and night without feeling themselves too
much for Mrs. Gervase Norgate, or being compelled to regard her as a
being apart from them. But they did not comprehend the bearing of the
common degradation, and they had not returned to their haunt as they
might have done.

Gervase had declined into such a state of fractiousness and sullenness,
that he was very poor company even for illiterate country-bred men like
himself. He was something of a ghastly spectacle, as he sat there, with
his glass three-fourths empty, and part of its contents spilt around
him, trying to smoke, trying to warm himself, with the soles of his
boots burnt from being pressed on the top of the wood fire, his teeth
chattering, at intervals, notwithstanding, as he cast furtive, dark
glances behind him.

Gervase was alone. Mrs. Gervase was dozing on a drawing-room couch, not
troubling to order a fire, though the room was on the ground-floor,--a
pleasant room in sunshine, but looking dull and dismal in wet and gloom.
She had lain there all the evening, with her hair, tumbled by the
posture, fallen down and straying in dim tresses on her shoulders.

Overcome by illness, Gervase at last defied his shrinking from his room
and bed, and retired for the night. His uneven footsteps and the closing
of his door had not long sounded through the house, which might have
been so cheery and was so dreary and silent, when Mrs. Gervase, cold and
comfortless, rose and proceeded to the study. She was drawn by the fire
and the light, but she was drawn more irresistibly by the subtle, potent
odour in the air. She came on like a sleep-walker. She sank down in the
chair which her husband had occupied, and stretched out her fine white
hand to the decanters which Miles had not removed. She had raised one,
and was about to pour its contents into a glass, when a noise at the
door startled her, and caused her to hold her arm suspended. Gervase,
returning for the bottle she grasped, stood in the doorway.

Ruined husband and ruined wife confronted each other on their stained
hearthstone. His weakness, replaced by failing stre