He was talking with a purpose, apparently to induce him to believe that both he and Lady Loudwater had taken her husband's threat of divorce proceedings lightly.

He began to think that they had not taken it lightly at all, or, at any rate, one or other of them had not.
"Yes," he said.

"That's what always happens with those blustering' fellows.

In the end no one takes them seriously.

But what I came to ask you was: Did you, as you came through the library or went out through it, hear Lord Loudwater snore ?" Colonel Grey hesitated, just as Lady Loudwater had hesitated over that question.