To-day
there was no wind, it had blown itself away during the night, and the
sight of the sunbeams streaming through the windows made Geoffrey long
to be in the open air. He had no book at hand to read, and whenever he
tried to think his mind flew back to that hateful matrimonial quarrel.
It was hard on him, Geoffrey thought, that he should be called upon
to endure such scenes. He could no longer disguise the truth from
himself--he had buried his happiness on his wedding-day. Looking
back across the years, he well remembered how different a life he had
imagined for himself. In those days he was tired of knocking about
and of youthful escapades; even that kind of social success which must
attend a young man who was handsome, clever, a good fellow, and blessed
with large expectations, had, at the age of six-and-twenty, entirely
lost its attractiveness. Therefore he had turned no deaf ear to his
uncle, Sir Robert Bingham, who was then going on for seventy, when he
suggested that it might be well of Geoffrey settled down, and introduced
him to Lady Honoria.
Lady Honoria was eighteen then, and a beauty of the rather thin but
statuesque type, which attracts men up to five or six and twenty and
then frequently bores, if it does not repel them.
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