Londoners, or rather people in London, seemed all to
be making an invidious distinction in their minds between him and his
wife. The fact that she continued to be called Lady Cressage was not
of itself important to him. But in the incessant going about in
London, their names were called out together so often that his ear grew
sensitive and sore to the touch of the footmen's reverberations. The
meaning differentiation which the voices of the servants insisted
upon, seemed inevitably reflected in the glance and manner of their
mistresses. More than anything else, that made him hate London, and
barred the doors of his mind to all thoughts of buying a town-house.

His newly-made wife, it is true, had not cared much for London,
either, and had agreed to his decision against a town-house almost
with animation. The occasion of their return from the hot bustle of the
metropolis to these cool home shades--in particular the minute in which,
at a bend in the winding carriage-way down below, they had silently
regarded together the spectacle uplifted before them, with the big,
welcoming house, and the servants on the terrace--had a place of its own
in his memory. Edith had pressed his arm, as they sat side by side in
the landau, on the instant compulsion of a feeling they had in common.
He had never, before or since, had quite the same assurance that she
shared an emotion with him.

He was very far, however, from finding fault with his wife. It was in
the nature of the life he chose to lead that he should see a great
deal of her, and think a great deal about her, and she bore both tests
admirably. If there was a fault to be found, it was with himself for
his inability to altogether understand her. She played the part she had
undertaken to play with abundant skill and discretion and grace, and
even with an air of nice good-fellowship which had some of the aspects
of affection. He was vaguely annoyed with himself for having insight
enough to perceive that it was a part she was playing, and yet lacking
the added shrewdness to divine what her own personal attitude to her
role was like. He had noticed sometimes the way good women looked at
their husbands when the latter were talking over their heads--with the
eager, intent, non-comprehending admiration of an affectionate dog. This
was a look which he could not imagine himself discovering in his wife's
eves. It was not conceivable to him that he should talk over her head.
Her glance not