'The little woman, you say, took to Dartrey?'

Fenellan, with the usual apologetic moderation of a second statement,
thought 'there was the look of it.'

'Well, we must watch over her. Dartrey!--but Dartrey's an honest fellow
with women. But men are men. Very few men spare a woman when the mad
fit is on her. A little woman-pretty little woman!--wife to Jacob
Blathenoy! She mustn't at her age have any close choosing--under her
hand. And Dartrey's just the figure to strike a spark in a tinder-box
head.'

'With a husband who'd reduce Minerva's to tinder, after a month of him!'

'He spent his honeymoon at his place at Wrensham; told me so.' Blathenoy
had therefore then heard of the building of Lakelands by the Victor
Radnor of the City; and had then, we guess--in the usual honeymoon
boasting of a windbag with his bride--wheezed the foul gossip, to hide
his emptiness and do duty for amusement of the pretty little caged bird.
Probably so. But Victor knew that Blathenoy needed him and feared him.
Probably the wife had been enjoined to keep silence; for the
Blachingtons, Fannings and others were, it could be sworn, blank and
unscratched folio sheets on the subject:--as yet; unless Mrs. Burman had
dropped venom.

'One pities the little woman, eh, Fenellan?'

'Dartrey won't be back for a week or so; and they're off to Switzerland,
after the dinner they give. I heard from him this morning; one of the
Clanconans is ill.