Lord Arleigh did not live with his wife, never visited her, never spoke of her; but it was quite clear that his motive for doing none of these things lay deeper than the world knew or could even guess.
The family solicitor went down to Winiston House occasionally, but Lord Arleigh never.

The few who met him after his marriage found him strangely altered.

Even his face had changed; the frank, honest, open look that had once seemed to defy and challenge and meet the whole world had died away; he looked now like a man with a secret to keep--a secret that had taken his youth from him, that had taken the light from his life, that hod shadowed his eyes, drawn hard lines of care round his lips, wrinkled his face, taken the music from his voice, and made of him a changed and altered, a sad, unhappy man.
There were one or two intimate friends--friends who had known him in his youth--who ventured to ask what this secret was, who appealed to him frankly to make his trouble known, telling him that sorrow shared was sorrow lightened; but with a sad smile he only raised his head and answered that his sorrow was one of which he could not speak.

Sometimes a kindly woman who had known him as boy and man--one with daughters, and sons of her own--would ask him what was the nature of his sorrow.

He would never tell.
"I cannot explain," he would reply.
Society tried hard to penetrate the mystery.