For the first three years, Thomas and Toto were happy. It was during this time that Lenox first met McConnell. Lady Jane was, after a fashion, Toto’s mentor-they were first cousins but treated each other as aunt and niece, Toto’s mother having succumbed to a fever when her daughter was only eleven. So Lenox was thrown together with the young couple a good deal. Thomas had reduced his practice, and he and his wife went out most evenings and traveled widely together. He accepted with goodwill her social schedule, and she accepted with equal goodwill their yearly visits to his family in Scotland.
But the first three years had ended, and the halcyon days of their marriage had ended with them. Thomas had all but abandoned his practice by then, and he began to drink too much. Toto had taken to spending six months of the year at Longwell, her father’s estate in Kent, just outside of London, while her husband remained in the city.
There had been a further deterioration, to the point, after five years of marriage, that the couple rarely appeared in public and were said not to be on speaking terms. But something had relented-either they had given up or they had resolved to make the best of things-and they were now, aged thirty-six and twenty-four, settling into the long view of life. It could end in two ways, Lenox had always thought: either in cold politeness, or in a new, quieter kind of love. Toto was so young, and McConnell so idealistic. But perhaps they would learn to compromise. At any rate, they had seemed kinder to each other the last few times he had seen them together. Lady Jane thought so too, and she was reliable about things like that.