Was he crumbling? In these months she could not quite be sure, and she
tried to shut her eyes when the little pieces fell off, to remind herself
that she must make allowances for the severity of his disappointment.
Spring was here, the spring to which he had so eagerly looked forward,
and yet the listlessness with which he went about his work was apparent.
Sometimes he did not appear at breakfast, although Honora clung with
desperation to the hour they had originally fixed: sometimes Mr. Manning
waited for him until nearly ten o'clock, only to receive curt dismissal.
He went off for long rides, alone, and to the despair of the groom
brought back the horses in a lather, with drooping heads and heaving
sides; one of them he ruined. He declared there wasn't a horse in the
stable fit to give him exercise.

Often he sat for hours in his study, brooding, inaccessible. She had the
tennis-court rolled and marked, but the contests here were
pitifully-unequal; for the row of silver cups on his mantel, engraved
with many dates, bore witness to his athletic prowess. She wrote for a
book on solitaire, but after a while the sight of cards became
distasteful. With a secret diligence she read the reviews, and sent for
novels and memoirs which she scanned eagerly before they were begun with
him. Once, when she went into his study on an errand, she stood for a
minute gazing painfully at the cleared space on his desk where once had
lain the papers and letters relative to the life of General Angus
Chiltern.

There were intervals in which her hope flared, in which she tasted,
fearfully and with bated breath, something that she had not thought to
know again. It was characteristic of him that his penitence was never
spoken: nor did he exhibit penitence. He seemed rather at such times