There is in this a measure of poetic justice.

Poetry and justice! Do you know, Ruth, they are two things I have ever loved ?" And he took a pinch of choice Bergamot.
"Will you be serious ?" she demanded.
"Trenchard would tell you that it were to make an exception from the rule of my life," he assured her, smiling.

"Yet even that might I do at your bidding." "But this is a serious matter," she told him angrily.

"For Richard," he acknowledged, closing his snuffbox with a snap.

"Tell me, what would you have me do ?" Since he asked her thus, she answered him in two words.