From the time he got up at seven o'clock until he went to bed punctually on the stroke of ten, he appeared to order his life with the single purpose of giving as little trouble as was compatible with living at all.

His tastes were the simplest; he drank only boiled water; he ate two eggs and a roll with his coffee at breakfast; he spent hardly a third as much on his clothes as George spent; and beyond an occasional visit to his club in the evening, he seemed to have absolutely no recreation.

His life was in the stock market, and it was a life of almost monastic simplicity and self-sacrifice.

If he had any pleasure, except the pleasure of providing his wife with the money for her dinner parties, which bored him excruciatingly, Gabriella had never discovered it.

"He asks so little for himself that it is pathetic," she remarked to George one night, when Mr.Fowler had gone upstairs, carrying the evening papers to bed with him.
"Oh, well, he gets what he asks for," retorted George indifferently, "and that's more than the rest of us can say." George was in a bad humour; he had been in a bad humour for weeks; and for this reason Gabriella had put off from day to day telling him that she expected a child in the autumn.