So, while his young wife had been gradually declining, Ramsay Caird had made very little alteration in the mode of life which he had thought fit to pursue since the earliest days of his marriage. Relying principally on the fact, which he was constantly urging, that he was of "no use," he absented himself more and more from his home; and when "doing duty" there, as he phrased it, strove in no way to hide the dislike with which he regarded the irksome task. Companionship was necessary to Ramsay Caird, and was not to be obtained, he found, among the class with whom since his arrival in London and his domestication in Brook-street he had been accustomed to associate. The men who had been pleasantly familiar with him in those days stood aloof, and seemed by no means anxious to continue the acquaintance. They had come, soon after his marriage, and dined in the little red-flocked tank in Squab-street, but that was principally for Madeleine's sake; and when rumours as to the newly-founded _ménage_ grew rife, and more especially after Tommy Toshington's delightful story of seeing Caird at Madame Favorita's door had got wind, the men generally agreed that he was a bad lot, and fought as shy of him as was compatible with common politeness. For it is to be noted that the loose-living Benedick, the married man who glories in his own escapades and talks with unctuous smack of his dissipations, is generally shunned by those men of his own set, who are by no means strait-laced, and forced to seek his company in a lower grade.