It was not one of his heroines who was worrying the novelist, but a real woman whom he liked and her husband whom he did not.

The husband it was who had finished matters by entering the field of speculation during the morning's work.
It may he confessed that Langholm had not by any means disliked him the year before.
What was the secret of this second marriage on the part of one who had been so recently and so miserably married?
Was it love?
Langholm would not admit it for a moment.

Steel did not love his wife, and there was certainly nothing to love in Steel.

Langholm had begun almost to hate him; he told himself it was because Steel did not even pretend to love his wife, but let strangers see the abnormal terms on which they lived.
What, then, was the explanation--the history--the excuse?
They were supposed to have married on the Continent; that was one of the few statements vouchsafed by Steel, and he happened to have made it in the first instance to Langholm himself.

Was there any truth in it?
And did Steel know the truth concerning his wife?
Your imaginative man is ever quick to form a theory based upon facts of his own involuntary invention.