So, just before the war she married Lord Lathkill. She was twenty-one. I did not see her till war was declared; then she asked me to lunch with her and her husband, in town. He was an officer in a Guards regiment, and happened to be in uniform, looking very handsome and well-set-up, as if he expected to find the best of life served up to him for ever. He was very dark, with dark eyes and fine black hair, and a very beautiful, diffident voice, almost womanish in its slow, delicate inflections. He seemed pleased and flattered at having Carlotta for a wife. To me he was beautifully attentive, almost deferential, because I was poor, and of the other world, those poor devils of outsiders. I laughed at him a little, and laughed at Carlotta, who was a bit irritated by the gentle delicacy with which he treated me. She was elated too. I remember her saying, "We need war, don't you think? Don't you think men need the fight, to keep life chivalrous and put martial glamour into it?" And I remember saying, "I think we need some sort of fight; but my sort isn't the war sort." It was August, we could take it lightly. "What's your sort?" she asked quickly. "I don't know: single-handed, anyhow," I said, with a grin. Lord Lathkill made me feel like a lonely sansculotte; he was so completely unostentatious, so very willing to pay all the attention to me, and yet so subtly complacent, so unquestioningly sure of his position. Whereas I was not a very sound earthenware pitcher which had already gone many times to the well. He was not conceited, not half as _conceited_ as I was. He was willing to leave me all the front of the stage, even with Carlotta. He felt so sure of some things, like a tortoise in a glittering, polished tortoiseshell that mirrors eternity. Yet he was not quite easy with me. "You are Derbyshire?" I said to him, looking into his face. "So am I! I was born in Derbyshire." He asked me with a gentle, uneasy sort of politeness, where? But he was a bit taken aback. And his dark eyes, brooding over me, had a sort of fear in them. At the centre they were hollow with a certain misgiving. He was so sure of _circumstances_, and not by any means sure of the man in the middle of the circumstances. Himself! Himself! That was already a ghost. I felt that he saw in me something crude but real, and saw himself as something in its own way perfect, but quite unreal. Even his love for Carlotta, and his marriage, was a circumstance that was inwardly unreal to him. One could tell by the curious way in which he waited, before he spoke. And by the hollow look, almost a touch of madness, in his dark eyes, and in his soft, melancholy voice. I could understand that she was fascinated by him. But God help him if ever circumstances went against him!