fourth time? A silly enough conclusion; for on the law of chances
there's no reason why red shouldn't come up three hundred times; and so I
found that your run of bad luck may be so long that you cannot have a
chance to recover, and are out of it before the wheel turns in your
favour. I oughn't to have married."

His voice had changed in tone, his look become most grave, there was
something very like reverence in his face, and deprecating submission in
his eyes. His fingers fussed with the rug that covered his knees.

"God help the man that's afraid of his own wife!" remarked the Young
Doctor to himself, not erroneously reading the expression of Crozier's
face and the tone of his voice. "There's nothing so unnerving."

"No, I oughtn't to have done it," Crozier went on. "But I will say again
it wasn't a sordid marriage, though she had great expectations, but not
immediate; and she was a girl of great character. She was able and
brilliant and splendid and far-seeing, and she knew her own mind,
and was radiantly handsome."

Kitty Tynan almost sniffed. Through a whole fortnight she had, with a
courage and a right-mindedness quite remarkable, fought her infatuation
for this man, and as she fought she had imagined a hundred times what his
wife was like. She had pictured to herself a gossamer kind of woman,
delicate, and in contour like one of the fashion-plate figures she saw in
the picture-papers. She had imagined her with a wide, drooping hat, with
a soft, clinging gown, and a bodice like a great white handkerchief
crossed on her breast, holding a basket of flowers, while a King
Charles spaniel gambolled at her feet.