Doomsday by Warwick Deeping

If Fream was dumb those days, his wife was blind. There were many little changes in him that should have been noticed by her and were not seen, for neither her eyes nor her thoughts were turned towards him, and her poor white guide-post stood as before with an arm pointing stiffly towards prosperity.

The pathetic part of it was that he tried to attract her attention. He might have gone about banging doors, and displaying all the symptoms of a worried and irritable man in need of his wife's sympathy, but his appeal was more negative. He took to his bed for three days, and his Weyfleet doctor was sent for. Her grandee's indisposition quite failed to attract Mary's attention. Her thoughts were elsewhere, and her activities fluttering around the preparations for a hospital fête that was to be held in the Hill House grounds in June. She was the chairwoman of the Amusements Sub-committee, a quid pro quo for the use of Hill House.