husband was entirely devoid of social importance, while, on the
other hand, Sir Godfrey Marayne's temporary monopoly of the caecal
operation which became so fashionable in the last decade of Queen
Victoria's reign as to be practically epidemic, created a strong
feeling in her favour.

She was blue-eyed and very delicately complexioned, quick-moving,
witty, given to little storms of clean enthusiasm; she loved
handsome things, brave things, successful things, and the respect
and affection of all the world. She did quite what she liked upon
impulse, and nobody ever thought ill of her.

Her family were the Mantons of Blent, quite good west-country
people. She had broken away from them before she was twenty to
marry Benham, whom she had idealized at a tennis party. He had
talked of his work and she had seen it in a flash, the noblest work
in the world, him at his daily divine toil and herself a Madonna
surrounded by a troupe of Blessed Boys--all of good family, some of
quite the best. For a time she had kept it up even more than he
had, and then Nolan had distracted her with a realization of the
heroism that goes to the ends of the earth. She became sick with
desire for the forests of Brazil, and the Pacific, and--a peak in
Darien. Immediately the school was frowsty beyond endurance, and
for the first time she let herself perceive how dreadfully a
gentleman and a scholar can smell of pipes and tobacco. Only one
course lay open to a woman of spirit. . . .

For a year she did indeed live like a woman of spirit, and it was at
Nolan's bedside that Marayne was first moved to admiration. She was
plucky. All men love a plucky woman.