'You had better stay the week out.' Mallinson saw his wife raise her head quickly as though she was about to object, and immediately accepted the invitation.

Parliament would not meet for three weeks, he reckoned, since there were still the county members to be elected.
Clarice spent the week in defining the relationship in which she and Drake were henceforth to stand towards each other.

They were to be animated by a stern spirit of duty,--by the same spirit, in fact, which had compelled Drake to court-martial Gorley in Africa, and subsequently to detail the episode to her.

Duty was to keep them apart.

She came to think of duty as a row of footlights across which they could from time to time look into each other's eyes.
Clarice felt that there was something very reassuring and protective in this notion of duty.