The backers of `` Mascot '' , the rival favourite , looked gloomy . The woman noticed nothing of all this . She was small , very pretty , still young , and gowned in a quite unmistakable way . She studied the man 's profile furtively . He looked older than when she had seen him last -- there were some silver threads gleaming in his close-clipped dark hair and short , pointed beard . Otherwise there was little change in the quiet features and somewhat stern grey eyes . She wondered if he had cared at all . They had not met for five years . She shut her eyes and looked in on her past . It all came back very vividly . She had been eighteen when they were married -- a gay , high-spirited girl and the season 's beauty . He was much older and a quiet , serious student . Her friends had wondered why she married him -- sometimes she wondered herself , but she had loved him , or thought so . The marriage had been an unhappy one . She was fond of society and gaiety , he wanted quiet and seclusion . She Was impulsive and impatient , he deliberate and grave . The strong wills clashed . After two years of an unbearable sort of life they had separated -- quietly , and without scandal of any sort . She had wanted a divorce , but he would not agree to that , so she had taken her own independent fortune and gone back to her own way of life . In the following five years she had succeeded in burying all remembrance well out of sight .
No one knew XXXXX she were satisfied or not ; her world was charitable to her and she lived a gay and quite irreproachable life .
In at for if independent of so than to years