When Doris reached home that evening, the little Kensington house, with half its carpets up and all but two of its rooms under dust-sheets, looked particularly lonely and unattractive.

Arthur's study was unrecognisable.

No cheerful litter anywhere.

No smell of tobacco, no sign of a male presence! Doris, walking restlessly from room to room, had never felt so forsaken, so dismally certain that the best of life was done.

Moreover, she had fully expected to find a letter from Arthur waiting for her; and there was nothing.
It was positively comic that under such circumstances anybody should expect her--Doris Meadows--to trouble her head about Lady Dunstable's affairs.