 just when a slow and secret growth of passion was making demand for room
and air. Mutimer had for some time been at a loss to understand his own
sensations; he knew that his wife was becoming more and more a necessity to him,
and that too when the progress of time would have led him to expect the very
opposite. He knew it during her absence at Exmouth, more still now that she was
away in London. It was with reluctance that he let her leave home, only his
satisfaction in her intimacy with the Westlakes and his hopes for Alice induced
him to acquiesce in her departure. Yet he could show nothing of this. A lack of
self-confidence, a strange shyness, embarrassed him as often as he would give
play to his feelings. They were intensified by suppression, and goaded him to
constant restlessness. When at most a day or two remained before Adela's return,
he could no longer resist the desire to surprise her in London.
    Not only did he find her in the company of the man whom he had formerly
feared as a rival, but her behaviour seemed to him distinctly to betray
consternation at his arrival. She was colourless, agitated, could not speak.
From that moment his love was of the quality which in its manifestations is
often indistinguishable from hatred. He resolved to keep her under his eye, to
enforce to the uttermost his marital authority, to make her pay bitterly for the
freedom she had stolen. His exasperated egoism flew at once to the extreme of
suspicion; he was ready to accuse her of completed perfidy. Mrs. Westlake became
his enemy; the profound distrust of culture, which was inseparable from his
mental narrowness, however ambition might lead him to disguise it, seized upon
the occasion to declare itself; that woman was capable of conniving at his
dishonour, even of plotting it. He would not allow Adela to remain in the house
a minute longer than he could help. Even the casual absence of Mr. Westlake
became a suspicious circumstance; Eldon of course chose the time for his visit.
    Adela was once more safe in the Manor, under lock and key, as it were. He
had not spoken of Eldon, though several times on the point of doing so. It was
obvious that the return home cost her suffering, that it was making her ill. He
could not get her to converse; he saw that she did not study. It was impossible
to keep watch on her at all moments of the day; yet how otherwise discover what
letters she wrote or received? He pondered the practicability of bribing
