And she has been trained to this sort of campaigning from her babyhood.

No good growling! I shall never hold my own!" Then, into this despairing mood there dropped suddenly a fragment of her neighbour, the Colonel's, conversation--"Mrs.So-and-so?
Impossible woman! Oh, one doesn't mind seeing her graze occasionally at the other end of one's table--as the price of getting her husband, don't you know ?--but--" Doris's sudden laugh at the Colonel's elbow startled that gentleman so that he turned round to look at her.

But she was absorbed in the menu, which she had taken up, and he could only suppose that something in it amused her.
A few days later arrived a letter for Meadows, which he handed to his wife in silence.

There had been no further discussion of Lady Dunstable between them; only a general sense of friction, warnings of hidden fire on Doris's side, and resentment on his, quite new in their relation to each other.

Meadows clearly thought that his wife was behaving very badly.