Ross watched her deteriorate in gloomy and unreproving silence.

She got herself together sufficiently for as good public appearance as a person of her wealth and position needed to make, he reasoned; what did it matter how she looked and talked at home where, after all, the only person she could hope to please was herself?
He held aloof, drawn from his aloofness occasionally by her whim to indulge herself in what she regarded as proofs of his love.

Her pouting, her whimpering, her abject but meaningless self-depreciation, her tears, were potent, not for the flattering reason she assigned, but because he, out of pity for her and self-reproach, and dread of her developing her mother's weakness, would lash himself into the small show of tenderness sufficient to satisfy her.
And now, steeped in the gall of as bitter a draught as experience forces folly to drink anew each day to the dregs--the realization that, though the man marries the money only, he lives with the wife only--Ross had met Adelaide again.

"I'll go to Chicago in the morning," was his conclusion.
"I'll do the honorable thing"-- he sneered at himself--"since trying the other would only result in her laughing at me and in my being still more miserable." But when morning came he was critical of the clothes his valet offered him, spent an hour in getting himself groomed for public appearance, then appeared at the Country Club for breakfast instead of driving to the station.

And after breakfast, he put off his departure "until to-morrow or next day," and went to see Mr.and Mrs.Hastings.And what more natural then than that Henrietta should take him to the Villa d'Orsay "to show you how charmingly Del has installed herself." "And perhaps," said Henrietta, "she and Arden Wilmot will go for a drive.