Alice was glad that this preoccupation took him much out of doors, for it had come to her notice that if he remained too much inside his spirits appeared to wither. She could not date this shift in him precisely, but by and by she could no longer conceal from herself that something in him was altered. William’s nature, hitherto so sanguine, was now subject to vicissitudes which somewhat bewildered her. He was quick to temper: that was new. He had in the past been subject to only very occasional bursts of anger, brought about by an injustice or some grave breach of conduct, and always directed outward, towards the wrongdoer. His anger then had been a welcome thing, like a great thunderstorm which clears the muggy air; yet now small gusts of fury blew through him yet not away from him. These were brought about by what she could not judge nor, worse, predict. More than once he had chided her for the fact that some trifling thing – the letter-knife, the shoe-horn – was not in the place where he expected it to be. He had never been short with her before. And while debate was a sport she enjoyed, incivility, hotness, she did not. Then, too, he appeared preoccupied. Several times she had gone into his study to call him to the luncheon table, only to find him sitting, without a pen in his hand nor a book open at his side. This was most unlike her William, who had never been without occupation.

The matter of the war remained a thorn between them.

William agreed that the Commissariat had been grotesquely maladministered, during the terrible first winter in the Crimea especially. But loyalty to his seniors and to his men forbade him from wholly condemning the campaign itself. Alice continued lively in her poor opinion of the panjandrums of Government, up to and including Lord Palmerston himself.

‘It is the contention of Mr Cobden and others besides that nothing can stop the Russian preponderance,’ said Alice as they sat down to lunch one day that autumn. She had spent a stimulating morning reading. ‘Did you know that it was estimated that, only two or three years before the war, Russia exported from the ports of the Black Sea some five million quarters of grain of all kinds? And so the calculation was made that if they continued to expand at the same rate as they have over the past five years or so, they would then be exporting fifteen or twenty millions annually. Naturally, they require ports from which to ship this great quantity of cargo. If a country is developing, this is the natural order of things and cannot be prevented.’

‘Mr Cobden this, Mr Cobden that! Can you never speak without referring to the man? It is as if he were seated beside you at all times, whispering instruction in your ear,’ said William, snapping his table napkin from its silver ring.