own, I sit on a
monument (they always keep one for me at home) and smile incessantly
at grief, and get as fat as possible. It is a refinement of cruelty,
you know, as superfluous flesh is not a thing to be hankered after."

"How you must have fretted," says Mrs. Branscombe, demurely, glancing
from under her long lashes at his figure, which has certainly gained
both in size and in weight since their last meeting.

At this they both laugh.

"Is your husband here to-day?" asks he, presently.

"Yes."

"Why isn't he with you?"

"He has found somebody more to his fancy, perhaps."

As she says this she glances round, as though for the first time alive
to the fact that indeed he is not beside her.

"Impossible!" says Kennedy. "Give any other reason but that, and I may
believe you. I am quite sure he is missing you terribly, and is vainly
searching every nook and corner by this time for your dead body. No
doubt he fears the worst. If you were my----I mean if ever I were to
marry (which of course is quite out of the question now), I shouldn't
let my wife out of my sight."

"Poor woman! what a time she is going to put in!" says Mrs.
Branscombe, pityingly. "Don't go about telling people all that, or you
will never get a wife. By this time Dorian and I have made the
discovery that we can do excellently well without each other
sometimes."

Dorian coming up behind her just as she says this, hears her, and
changes color.

"How d'ye do!" he says to Kennedy, civilly, if not cordially, that
young man receiving his greeting with the utmost bonhommie and an
unchanging front.

For a second, Branscombe refuses to meet his wife's eyes, then,
conquering the momentary feeling of pained disappointment, he turns to
her, and says, gently,--

"Do you care to stay much longer? Clarissa has gone, and Scrope, and
the Carringtons."

"I don't care to stay another minute: I should like to go home now,"
says Georgie, slipping her hand through his arm, as though glad to
have something to lean on; and, as she speaks, she lifts her face and
bestows upon him a small smile. It is a very dear little smile, and
has the effect of restoring him to perfect happiness again.

Seeing which, Kennedy raises his brows, and then his hat, and, bowing,
turns aside, and is soon lost amidst the crowd.

"You are sure you want to come home?" says Dorian, anxiously. "I am
not in a hurry, you know."

"I am. I have walked enough, and talked enough, to last m