"Why this sudden change of mind?" he demanded. "It can't be because you
want to spend the winter in Quicksands."

She was indeed at a loss what to say. She could not bring herself to ask
him whether he had been influenced by Trixton Brent. If he had, she told
herself, she did not wish to know. He was her husband, after all, and it
would be too humiliating. And then he had taken the house.

"Have you hit on a palace you like better?" he inquired, with a clumsy
attempt at banter. "They tell me the elder Maitlands are going abroad
--perhaps we could get their house on the Park."

"You said you couldn't afford Mrs. Rindge's house," she answered
uneasily, "and I--I believed you."

"I couldn't," he said mysteriously, and paused.

It seemed to her, as she recalled the scene afterwards, that in this
pause he gave the impression of physically swelling. She remembered
staring at him with wide, frightened eyes and parted lips.

"I couldn't," he repeated, with the same strange emphasis and a palpable
attempt at complacency. "But--er--circumstances have changed since then."

"What do you mean, Howard?" she whispered.

The corners of his mouth twitched in the attempt to repress a smile.

"I mean," he said, "that the president of a trust company can afford to
live in a better house than the junior partner of Dallam and Spence."