Leila heard it with a shrug; but such things mattered to her now, and she cried over it at night, burning that Plank should hear her name used jestingly to emphasise the depth of her husband's degradation.
Mortimer stayed out at night very frequently now.

Also, he appeared to make his money go farther, or was luckier at his "card killings," because he seldom attempted to bully Leila, being apparently content with his allowance.
Once or twice Plank saw him with an unusually attractive girl belonging to a world very far removed from Leila's.

Somebody said she was an actress when she did anything at all--one Lydia Vyse, somewhat celebrated for an audacity not too delicate.

But Plank was no more interested than any man who can't afford to endanger his prospects by a closer acquaintance with that sort of pretty woman.
Meanwhile Mortimer kept away from home, wife, and church, and Plank frequented them, so the two men did not meet very often; and the less they met the less they found to say to one another.
Now that the forty days had really begun, Major Belwether became restless for the flesh-pots of the south, although Lenten duties sat lightly enough upon the house of Belwether.

These decent observances were limited to a lax acknowledgment of fast days, church in moderation, and active participation in the succession of informal affairs calculated to sustain life in those intellectually atrophied and wealthy people entirely dependent upon others for their amusements.
To these people no fear of punishment hereafter can equal the terror of being left to their own devices; and so, though the opera was over, theatres unfashionable, formal functions suspended and dances ended, the pace still continued at a discreet and decorous trot; and those who had not fled to California or Palm Beach, remained to pray and play Bridge with an unction most edifying.
And all this while Sylvia had not seen Siward.
Sylvia was changing.