He had one of those shallow natures to which the tragedy of life is impossible. He was disappointed--angry at the turn which affairs had taken; but he was not reduced to despair. To take things easily had been his complete code of morals and philosophy from earliest boyhood. He was not going to break his heart for any woman, were she the loveliest, the cleverest, the noblest that ever the gods endowed with their choicest gifts. She might be ever so fair, but if she were not fair for him she was, in a manner, non-existent. Life, in his philosophy, was too short to be wasted in following phantoms. 'You must have thought me a mean cad this morning, when I offered you a couple of sovereigns,' he said; 'yet they constituted a third of my worldly possessions, and I was sorely puzzled how we were to get to Dieppe on less than four pounds. I have been living from hand to mouth ever since I left the university, picking up a few pounds now and then by literature, writing criticisms for a theatrical journal, and so on--by no means a brilliant living. Perhaps, after all, it is as well you take things so severely,' he added, with a sneer. 'If we had been well disposed towards each other, we must have starved.' 'I could have lived upon a crust with a husband whom I loved and respected; but not with a man who could act a lie, as you did,' said Ida. She took her bag from the chair where Brian had thrown it as they entered the room, and went out on the landing. 'Good-bye, Mrs. Wendover,' he called after her; 'let me know if I can ever be of any use to you.' She was going downstairs by this time, and he was looking down at her across the heavy old banister rail. 'I suppose you are going straight to your father's?' 'Yes.' 'Hadn't you better stop and have some lunch? The train doesn't go for hours.' 'No, thanks.' The gray gown fluttered against the sombre brown panelling as his wife turned the corner of the lower landing and disappeared from his view--perhaps for ever. Brian went back to his room, and stood in the middle of it, looking round him with a contemplative air. It was a pleasant room, arranged with rather a dandified air--pipes, walking-sticks, old engravings, _bric-à-brac_--the relics of his college life. 'Well, if she had been more agreeable, I should have had to get new rooms, and that would have been a bore,' he said to himself; and then he sank into a chair, gave a laugh that was half a sob, and wiped a mist of tears from his eyes. 'What fools we have both been!' he muttered to himself, 'I knew she was in love with the Abbey; but I don't believe a word she says about hating me!' And yet--and yet--she had seemed very much in earnest when she tore herself from his arms with that agonized shriek. CHAPTER X. A BAD PENNY.