This was what Richard decided, and his heart grew very hard against the young wife, who looked so innocent and pretty in her quiet sleep, when at last he sought his pillow and lay down by her side.
He was very moody and silent for days after that, and even his clients detected an irritability in his manner which they had never seen before.
"There was nothing ailed him," he said to Ethelyn, when she asked what was the matter, and accused him of being positively cross.

She was very gay; Camden society suited her; and as the season advanced, and the festivities grew more and more frequent, she was seldom at home more than one or two evenings in the week, while the day was given either to the arrangement of dress or taking of necessary rest, so that her husband saw comparatively little of her, except for the moment when she always came to him with hood and white cloak in hand to ask him how she looked, before going to the carriage waiting at the door.

Never in her girlish days had she been so beautiful as she was now, but Richard seldom told her so, though he felt the magic influence of her brilliant beauty, and did not wonder that she was the reigning belle.

He seldom accompanied her himself.

Parties, and receptions, and concerts, were bores, he said; and at first he had raised objections to her going without him.