He had always liked dangerous games--the most unbroken polo ponies to train in the country, the freshest horses, the fiercest beasts to stalk and kill--and why not a difficult wife?
It would add an adorable spice to the affair.

But as he was very honest with himself he knew, underneath, that it was not wholly even this instinct, but that she had cast some spell over him and that he must have her for his own.
"You might very well ask her history," Francis Markrute said.

He could be so gracious when he liked, and he really admired the wholehearted dash with which Lord Tancred had surrendered; there was something big and royal about it--he himself never gambled in small sums either.

"So as I expect you won't," he continued, "I will tell you.

She is the daughter of Maurice Grey, a brother of old Colonel Grey of Hentingdon, whom everybody knew, and she has been the widow of an unspeakable brute for over a year.