figures, Lady Dunstable and Arthur--seemed to melt away. She was not the
first wife, by a long way, into whose quiet breast Lady Dunstable had
dropped these seeds of discord. She knew it well by report; but it was
hateful, both to wifely feeling and natural vanity, that _she_ should
now be the victim of the moment, and should know no more than her
predecessors how to defend herself. "Why can't I be cool and
cutting--pay her back when she is rude, and contradict her when she's
absurd? She _is_ absurd often. But I think of the right things to say
just five minutes too late. I have no nerve--that's the point!--only
_l'esprit d'escalier_ to perfection. And she has been trained to this
sort of campaigning from her babyhood. No good growling! I shall never
hold my own!"

Then, into this despairing mood there dropped suddenly a fragment of her
neighbour, the Colonel's, conversation--"Mrs. So-and-so? Impossible
woman! Oh, one doesn't mind seeing her graze occasionally at the other
end of one's table--as the price of getting her husband, don't you
know?--but--"

Doris's sudden laugh at the Colonel's elbow startled that gentleman so
that he turned round to look at her. But she was absorbed in the menu,
which she had taken up, and he could only suppose that something in it
amused her.

A few days later arrived a letter for Meadows, which he handed to his
wife in silence. There had been no further discussion of Lady Dunstable
between them; only a general sense of friction, warnings of hidden fire
on Doris's side, and resentment on his, quite new in their relation to
each other. Meadows clearly thought that his wife was behaving very
badly. Lady Dunstable's efforts on his behalf had already done him