But she was not interested in the contents of his soul in public places
on which the world's eye is fixed. She refused to allow Leo to do what he
desired, and assumed an air of almost possessive friendship before
Society. His natural inclination for the blatant was firmly checked by
her. She cared nothing for him really, but her woman's instinct had
divined that he was the type of man most likely to rouse the slumbering
passion of Fritz, if Fritz were led to suspect that she was attracted to
him. Men like Lord Holme are most easily jealous of the men who most
closely resemble them. Their conceit leads them to put an exaggerated
value upon their own qualities in others, upon the resemblance to their
own physique exhibited by others.
Leo Ulford was rather like a younger and coarser Lord Holme. In him Lady
Holme recognised an effective weapon for the chastisement, if not for the
eventual reclamation, of her husband. It was characteristic of her that
this was the weapon she chose, the weapon she still continued to rely on
even after her conversation with Robin Pierce. Her faith in white angels
was very small. Perpetual contact with the world of to-day, with life as
lived by women of her order, had created within her far other faiths,
faiths in false gods, a natural inclination to bow the knee in the house
of Rimmon rather than before the altars guarded by the Eternities.
And then--she knew Lord Holme; knew what attracted him, what stirred him,
what moved him to excitement, what was likely to hold him.
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