She did this and that for him, and she was no doubt on such terms of intimacy with him that they were really part of each other's life in a scheme of domesticity unlike any boarding-house organization she had ever known.
Here in everything there was the air, the decorum, and the unartificial comfort of home.
This was why he could live without his wedded wife and her gold and her brocade, and the silk and the Persian rugs, and the grand piano and the carriages and the high silk hat from Piccadilly.

Her husband had had the luxuries of wealth, and here he was living like a Spartan on his hill--and alone; though he had a wife whom men had beseiged both before and after marriage.

A feeling of impotent indignation suddenly took possession of her.

Here he was with two women, unattached,--one interesting and good and agreeable and good-looking, and the other almost a beauty,--who were part of the whole rustic scheme in which he lived.

They made him comfortable, they did the hundred things that a valet or a fond wife would do; they no doubt hung on every word he uttered--and he could be interesting beyond most men.