it suited her temperament; but as the head
of a household with six thousand pounds a year at its disposal, he
objected to any hint of the thing at meals. And to-night he objected
to it altogether. Who could guess from the homeliness of their family
life that he was in a position to spend a hundred pounds a week and
still have enough income left over to pay the salary of a town clerk
or so? Nobody could guess; and he felt that people ought to be able
to guess. When he was young he would have esteemed an income of
six thousand pounds a year as necessarily implicating feudal state,
valets, castles, yachts, family solicitors, racing-stables, county
society, dinner-calls and a drawling London accent. Why should his
wife wear an apron at all? But the sad truth was that neither his wife
nor his mother ever _looked_ rich, or even endeavoured to look rich.
His mother would carry an eighty-pound sealskin as though she had
picked it up at a jumble sale, and his wife put such simplicity
into the wearing of a hundred-and-eighty pound diamond ring that its
expensiveness was generally quite wasted.

And yet, while the logical male in him scathingly condemned this
feminine defect of character, his private soul was glad of it, for
he well knew that he would have been considerably irked by the
complexities and grandeurs of high life. But never would he have
admitted this.

Nellie's face, as she sat down, was not limpid. He understood naught
of it. More than twenty years had passed since they had first met--he
and a wistful little creature--at a historic town-hall dance. He
could still see the wistful little creature in those placid and pure
features, in that buxom body; but now there was a formidable, capable
and experienced woman there too. Impossible to credit that the wistful
little creature was thirty-seven! But she was! Indeed, it was very
doubtful if she would ever see thirty-eight again. Once he had had the
most romantic feelings about her. He could recall the slim flexibility
of her waist, the timorous melting invitation of her eyes. And now ...
Such was human existence!

She sat up erect on her chair. She did not apologize for being late.
She made no inquiry as to his neuralgia. On the other hand, she was
not cross. She was just neutral, polite, cheerful, and apparently
conscious of perfection. He strongly desired to inform her of the
exact time of day, but his lips would not articulate the words.

"Maud," she said with div