An easy-going, simple-minded fellow, aged about forty, with a boyish good temper and no will to speak of, he seemed never to entertain a doubt of his wife's honesty, and in any case would probably have agreed, on the least persuasion, to let bygones be bygones.

He spoke rather proudly than otherwise of Mrs.
Buncombe's artistic success.
'It isn't every woman could have done it, you know, Mr.Rolfe.' 'It is not,' Harvey assented.
Only those rooms were furnished which the little family used, five or six in all; two or three stood vacant, and served as playgrounds for the children in bad weather.

Of his relatives at the top, Buncombe never spoke; he either did not know, or viewed with indifference, the fact that Mrs.Handover served his lodger in a menial capacity.

About once a month he invited three or four male friends to a set dinner, and hilarity could be heard until long after midnight.

Altogether it was a strange household, and, as he walked about the streets of the neighbourhood, Harvey often wondered what abnormalities even more striking might be concealed behind the meaningless uniformity of these heavily respectable housefronts.