In time he learnt to see that the fault was not altogether with his wife, who was by no means a bad sort of woman in her degree.

But her degree differed from his degree.

She had married for freedom and wealth and to gain a larger scope wherein to exercise those tastes which inherited disposition and education had given to her, as she believed that he had married her because she was the daughter of a peer.
Lady Honoria, like many another woman of her stamp, was the overbred, or sometimes the underbred, product of a too civilized age and class.

Those primitive passions and virtues on which her husband had relied to make the happiness of their married life simply did not exist for her.

The passions had been bred and educated out of her; for many generations they have been found inconvenient and disquieting attributes in woman.
As for the old virtues, such as love of children and the ordinary round of domestic duty, they simply bored her.