most of indelicacy. Teresa was occupied in taking
in the details of Grizel's costume, in condemning the blue snood, and
determining to try the effect on her own hair immediately on her return
home. She found time, however, to give a quick glance at Martin as
Grizel made her pronouncement, and noted the quiver of feeling which
passed over his face. The understanding which comes of fellow-feeling
revealed the meaning of that quiver. She understood why the man lowered
his eyes and gave no glance of response. He was afraid that he might
reveal too much!

After that, other visitors arrived quick and fast. Bells rang, doors
were opened, and in twos and threes the representatives of Chumley
society were announced, and made their bow. They had come together for
the sake of companionships or the sake also of being able to compare
notes on the way home. They all wore their new spring costumes, and
looked--the majority at least--personable enough, yet Martin realised
with mingled pain and pride the gulf of difference which yawned between
them and his wife. They were practical, commonplace women, leading
practical, commonplace lives; to call them ill-bred or uncultivated
would have been untrue. They came of good stock, had cultivated their
brains and turned them to account, but there was one side of their
nature which had not been developed, and that was the side which, in
Grizel's set, had been considered all-important. They had been brought
up to discount appearances, and to view with suspicion any person of
marked personal charm. They worshipped the god of convention, and its
priestess Mrs Grundy. Grizel considered that a woman's first duty was
to charm, and her second,--if a second remained, worth speaking about,--
to defy convention, and be a law unto oneself.

Seated in her niche of glowing colour, she looked as much out of place
as an orchid in a field of wild flowers, and Martin watching the face of
each new-comer, saw reflected upon it the same surprise, the same
disapproval, the same unease. He realised that Chumley was a little
shocked by the unconventionality of the drawing-room, and still more by
the unconventionality of the bride herself. In the last ten years of
his life he had remained supremely indifferent of what his neighbours
might say or think, but--these good women would be Grizel's neighbours,
out of love for himself she had cast her lot among them; he was almost
painfully anxious that she sho