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she started towards the mantelpiece again, he moved in front of her. She flashed him a contemptuous look and turned on her heel. ‘Since you are clearly determined to be unreasonable , I will go for it.’
    On her return, Goodchild took the thick white envelope andpulled out its contents, reading in silence for a while, then bursting out:
    ‘Fifteen guineas for a Honiton fichu. What in the name of all that’s reasonable is a fichu? A handkerchief, isn’t it? Must you pay that for a miserable scrap of lace?’
    ‘Large enough to cover the neck and shoulders, but no matter.’
    ‘A French cambric peignoir trimmed with Valenciennes: twenty guineas.’ The thick creamy paper shook in his hand. ‘Twenty guineas for the gown you wear when you have your hair dressed. It’s preposterous, incredible.’
    She tossed back her head with apparent indifference to his remarks.
    ‘I wear it to breakfast. Should I be careless of my appearance at the only meal we take alone together?’
    He laughed derisively and stabbed at the paper with a finger.
    ‘I see you’re not careless of your appearance when we’ve company either. Dinner dresses at sixty guineas. A manteau de cour, whatever that may be: forty guineas. Nice round figures these.’ He unfolded another sheet. ‘Great God, it’s endless…. Lined with ivory satin, trimmed with hand-worked embroidery of wild flowers on Brussels net.’ He flung down the pages and sank down onto a chaise-longue opposite the fire, resting his head in his hands.
    He heard her come towards him and then felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her anger he could bear, but the sound of her pained voice enraged him.
    ‘Harry,’ she whispered, ‘how do you expect me to sympathise? Tell me honestly how much you spend on the hunt each year, how much on the stables? What economies have you made there?’
    ‘How can I turn away men who’ve worked for the family since I was a boy? To defray the stud’s expenses, I’ve as near as damn it sold out to the Braithwaites. Must I do more?’
    ‘Yet you bought a new mail-phaeton easily enough.’
    He jumped to his feet, trembling with rage.
    ‘I am not quite a beggar yet.’ His awareness of the fact that by questioning her he had left himself open to similar criticism, did not diminish his sense of humiliation. She had turned away, as though implying that his behaviour was too gross to be witnessed.
    ‘You have every comfort in Manchester, people say,’ she said quietly.
    ‘I live no better than most of my officers when I am with the regiment.’
    ‘I have heard otherwise.’
    ‘Then you heard lies,’ he shouted, storming towards the door, but stopping short, realising that to leave now, just when Helen had hinted at knowledge of the Manchester villa he kept for entertaining his current mistress, would be playing into, her hands. In front of him, on the top of a lacquered Chinese cabinet, was an ivory chess set on a mother-of-pearl board. He picked up a knight and examined it with as much calmness as he could contrive, knowing that he had made himself absurd. Then replacing the piece, he looked at his wife and sighed. If only she could make herself more obliging and less critical; but it was always the same with women who thought too much. The intelligence and sharpness of tongue which had once attracted him, now had the opposite effect. Still beautiful at thirty-two – not even he could deny that – but to him it seemed a chill beauty in comparison with the opulent and more blatant charms of his Manchester doctor’s wife. When told of his troubles Dolly Carstairs would not blame him for bringing them on himself, as Helen had so often done, but would give him the comfort and sympathy he craved.
    Goodchild did not want to return to the subject of the dress-maker’s bill, but, since he was determined not to leave meekly, as if cowed by his wife’s hints, and could think of no other grounds on which to attack her, he could see nothing for it. He had