Caroline busied herself greatly about the house, doing much of the work in the rooms, and even in the kitchen, herself. But that was when he was out. Whenever he saw her she was no more occupied with such work than she had been at the Abbey. She would be in her drawing-room, having changed her clothes, ready to give him his tea when he came home, and she would keep him bright company afterwards. Then she would dress for dinner, and of course it was taken for granted that he would dress, too. The little dinner would be perfect, and the invaluable maid would serve it in such fashion that it was difficult to think of her as having also cooked it. Then after their coffee they would go into the drawing-room, where it seemed profanation for Maurice to smoke a pipe. So, though Caroline encouraged him to do so, he was preparing himself to knock it off altogether, and content himself with a cigarette after dinner until later in the evening. To a man brought up to this way of living it would have been a miracle of happiness to have had it all so cleverly provided for him by the young wife who was anxious that he should miss nothing of what he had been used to. The little parlour, beautifully furnished as it was, was not a lady's boudoir, in which a man could not feel himself at home. There was a big easy chair, books, and magazines, arrangements for writing. But though the whole house and all its arrangements were to Caroline the last word in simplicity and economy, it was complicated luxury to him, of a sort that he could only adopt as his ordinary mode of life for her sake. It was not he who had gained it for her, or he might have taken more pride in it. As against this it was part of her, who was so much more delicately nurtured than himself, and the fit setting for her delicate charm, which he, as much as any of those who considered it ill-allied with his outward absence of charm and delicacy, thought of as setting her above him. So he was happy in adapting himself to what meant restraint and careful watchfulness to him. In all essentials her desires were as simple and unenvious as his. He knew that if their lot had been cast in a new country, where she would have had few or none of the refinements that she had always lived with, she would have made nothing of doing without them, and would have worked for him as he would have worked for her. She should never guess, if he could help it, that this sophisticated life was uncongenial to him. He had her, as his constant delight and treasure, and what did anything else matter?