Honora sought, with an energy that had in it an element of desperation, to keep pace with her husband.  For she was determined that he should have no interests in which she did not share.  In those first days it was her dread that he might grow away from her, and instinct told her that now or never must the effort be made.  She, too, studied farming; not from books, but from him.  In their afternoon ride along the shady river road, which was the event of her day, she encouraged him to talk of his plans and problems, that he might thus early form the habit of bringing them to her.  And the unsuspecting male in him responded, innocent of the simple subterfuge.  After an exhaustive discourse on the elements lacking in the valley soil, to which she had listened in silent intensity, he would exclaim: 

“By George, Honora, you’re a continual surprise to me.  I had no idea a woman would take an interest in these things, or grasp them the way you do.”

Lordly commendations these, and she would receive them with a flush of gratitude.

Nor was it ever too hot, or she too busy with household cares, for her to follow him to the scene of his operations, whatever these might be:  she would gladly stand for an hour listening to a consultation with the veterinary about an ailing cow.  Her fear was lest some matter of like importance should escape her.  She had private conversations with Mr. Manning, that she might surprise her husband by an unsuspected knowledge.  Such were her ruses.

The housekeeper who had come up from New York was the subject of a conjugal conversation.

“I am going to send her away, Hugh,” Honora announced.  “I don’t believe —–­your mother had one.”

The housekeeper’s departure was the beginning of Honora’s real intimacy with Starling.  Complicity, perhaps, would be a better word for the commencement of this relationship.  First of all, there was an inspection of the family treasures:  the table-linen, the silver, and the china —­Sevres, Royal Worcester, and Minton, and the priceless dinner-set, of Lowestoft which had belonged to Alexander Chiltern, reserved, for great occasions only:  occasions that Starling knew by heart; their dates, and the guests the Lowestoft had honoured.  His air was ceremonial as he laid, reverently, the sample pieces on the table before her, but it seemed to Honora that he spoke as one who recalls departed glories, who held a conviction that the Lowestoft would never be used again.

Although by unalterable custom he submitted, at breakfast, the menus of the day to Hugh, the old butler came afterwards to Honora’s boudoir during her struggle with the account books.  Sometimes she would look up and surprise his eyes fixed upon her, and one day she found at her elbow a long list made out in a painstaking hand.

“What’s this, Starling?” she asked.

“If you please, madame,” he answered, “they’re the current prices in the markets—­here.”