The fact that she continued to be called
Lady Cressage was not of itself important to him.
But in the incessant going about in London, their names were
called out together so often that his ear grew sensitive
and sore to the touch of the footmen's reverberations.
The meaning differentiation which the voices of the servants
insisted upon, seemed inevitably reflected in the glance
and manner of their mistresses. More than anything else,
that made him hate London, and barred the doors of his
mind to all thoughts of buying a town-house.
His newly-made wife, it is true, had not cared much
for London, either, and had agreed to his decision
against a town-house almost with animation. The occasion
of their return from the hot bustle of the metropolis to
these cool home shades--in particular the minute in which,
at a bend in the winding carriage-way down below,
they had silently regarded together the spectacle uplifted
before them, with the big, welcoming house, and the servants
on the terrace--had a place of its own in his memory.
Edith had pressed his arm, as they sat side by side in
the landau, on the instant compulsion of a feeling they
had in common. He had never, before or since, had quite
the same assurance that she shared an emotion with him.
He was very far, however, from finding fault with his wife.
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