od deal
since I married you."

She was silent. But the thought occurred to her that a complete
absorption in commercialism was not developing.

"If you can manage it, Honora," he added with an attempt at lightness,
"I wish you'd have a little dinner soon, and ask Brent. Will you?"

"Nothing," she replied, "would give me greater pleasure."

He patted her on the shoulder and left the room whistling. But she sat
where she was until the maid came in to pull the curtains and turn on
the lights, reminding her that guests were expected.

.....................

Although the circle of Mr. Brent's friends could not be said to include
any university or college presidents, it was, however, both catholic
and wide. He was hail fellow, indeed, with jockeys and financiers, great
ladies and municipal statesmen of good Irish stock. He was a lion who
roamed at large over a great variety of hunting grounds, some of
which it would be snobbish to mention; for many reasons he preferred
Quicksands: a man-eater, a woman-eater, and extraordinarily popular,
nevertheless. Many ladies, so it was reported, had tried to tame him:
some of them he had cheerfully gobbled up, and others after the briefest
of inspections, disdainfully thrust aside with his paw.

This instinct for lion taming, which the most spirited of women possess,
is, by the way, almost inexplicable to the great majority of the male
sex. Honora had it, as must have been guessed. But however our faith in
her may be justified by the ridiculous ease of her previous conquests,
we cannot regard without trepidation her entrance into the arena with
this particular and widely renowned king of beasts. Innocence pitted
against sophistry and wile and might.

Two of the preliminary contests we have already witnessed. Others, more
or less similar, followed during a period of two months or more. Nothing
inducing the excessive wagging of tongues,--Honora saw to that, although
Mrs. Chandos kindly took the trouble to warn our heroine,--a scene for
which there is unfortunately no space in this chronicle; an entirely
amicable, almost honeyed scene, in Honora's boudoir. Nor can a complete
picture of life at Quicksands be undertaken. Multiply Mrs. Dallam's
dinner-party by one hundred, Howard Silence's Sundays at the Club
by twenty, and one has a very fair idea of it. It was not precisely
intellectual. "Happy," says Montesquieu, "the people whose annals are
blank in history's book." Let us l