Kuppuswami Ayyar, J.

1. This is a petition to revise the order of the Special First Class Magistrate, Saidapet, enhancing the rate of maintenance awarded to the respondent, the wife of the petitioner, in a previous order of that Court on the ground that the life has become costlier and that she could not be able to live on the same rate of maintenance.

2. One of the objections raised by the petitioner (husband) is that he and his wife had lived together as husband and wife after the passing of the previous order and that therefore the original order of the Special First Class Magistrate has ceased to be effective it will have to be decided whether a claim for maintenance is sustainable on subsequent conduct. Of course, the wife pleaded that there was no real living as husband and wife, that, when she applied on a prior occasion for enhancement of the rate and when that petition came on for hearing, her husband, to escape the consequence of an enhancement of the rate, played a fraud on her stating that he would take her back and maintain her and she agreed not to press the petition. But in two months he made it impossible for her to live with him in the house by placing her in ch