After his marriage, Scrope was more often with her than he had ever been, and far more willing, not only to ask but to take, his Egeria's advice on all that concerned his brilliant, meteoric career. He seldom mentioned his wife, but Mrs. Panfillen knew her friend far too well not to know how it was with him; Althea fretted his nerves, offended his taste, jarred his conscience, at every turn of their joint life. There were, however, two meagre things to the good--Althea's fortune, the five thousand a year, which now, after four years, did not seem so large an income as it had seemed at first; and the fact that Scrope's marriage had extinguished the odious, and, what was much more unpleasant to such a woman as was Joan Panfillen, the ridiculous, jealousy of Joan's husband. Thomas Panfillen greatly admired Althea; he thought her what she was--a very lovely young woman, and the fact that he had known her father made him complacently suppose that he had brought about her marriage to the peculiar, he was told the remarkably clever, if rather odd, Perceval Scrope. Baulked of certain instinctive rights, the human heart seeks compensation as surely as water seeks its level. Althea, unknown to herself, had a compensation. His name was John Bustard. He was in a public office--to be precise, the Privy Council Office. He lived in rooms not far from his work, that is, not far from Delahay Street, and he had got into the way of dropping in to tea two, three, sometimes even four times a week. The fact that Bustard was an old schoolfellow of Scrope's had been his introduction to Althea in the early days when she had been conscientiously anxious to associate herself with her husband's interests past and present. But of the innumerable people with whom Scrope had brought her into temporary contact, Mr. Bustard--she always called him Mr. Bustard, as did most other people--was the one human being who, being the fittest as regarded herself, survived. And yet never had there been a man less suited to play the part of hero, or even of consoler. Mr. Bustard was short, and his figure was many years older than his age, which was thirty-four. While forcing himself to take two constitutionals a day, he indulged in no other manlier form of exercise, and his contempt for golf was the only thing that tended to a lack of perfect understanding between his colleagues and himself. He was interested in his work, but he tried to forget it when he was not at the office. Bustard was a simple soul, but blessed with an unformulated, though none the less real, philosophy of life. Of the matter nearest his heart he scarcely ever spoke, partly because he had always supposed it to be uninteresting to anyone but himself, and also on account of a certain thorny pride which prevented his being willing to ask favours from the indifferent.