The days went by in a strain that was wholly absurd, but also wholly unpleasant. Examining things in the light of healthy, normal experience, Gundred could not even tell herself that she had a grievance. She still feared and disliked the presence of Ivor Restormel, with a fear which no reason could account for, but which no reason could dispel. But in every way the boy was perfectly harmless and even pleasant. Gundred, in her heart of hearts had expected that her instinct would immediately be justified on closer acquaintance by discovering that Ivor Restormel took drugs, or read French novels, or had a tendency to gambling and kleptomania. She watched him carefully, in public and in private, secretly and openly, hoping that some such development might force her husband to recognise the soundness of her intuitions, and get rid of the undesirable immigrant. However, none of these idiosyncrasies could be brought to light, observe she never so minutely. The boy was just an ordinary, nice, healthy boy; there was nothing vague or mysterious or neurotic about him; his personality had no strong colours anywhere, was altogether mild, unformed, healthy in its growth. And yet Gundred, recognising all this, could not help shrinking from him, shrinking from him more eagerly day by day, with a vigour of feeling not by any means wholly attributable to her anger against Kingston for disobeying her wishes in this matter. Among the weak points of her character a lack of honesty could not always be counted; she frankly acknowledged to herself that no fault could be found with Ivor Restormel. Good, kind, companionable, nice-minded, he appeared to be everything that she herself, by all the rules of her code, should most warmly have liked and approved. This only made it the odder, therefore, that she should feel against him so unconquerable a secret dislike. Gundred almost felt as if it were not the boy himself that she disliked, but some deep corner of his character which she seemed to have known and dreaded for many years. She divined in him a lurking enmity of which his own innocent and sunny nature was altogether unconscious. But Gundred pulled herself up short at this point, and refused to indulge in any such vain fantasies. People, it is well known, do not contain these dual personalities; if Gundred dreaded this boy, who, to all seeming, was everything sane and wholesome, her feeling could have nothing to do with any nonsensical superstition, but would certainly--if not sooner, then later--be disastrously shown to have been founded on fact, by the discovery of its object’s carefully hidden iniquity. Gundred, as the days went by, withdrew herself more and more wholly from her husband’s life. Now she no longer took even a formal share in it. She stood outside and watched for her opportunity to strike at the intruder. That neither Kingston nor Gundred any longer felt how completely they were removed from each other in itself