as they sometimes do,
well--it's very hard--but I am afraid she must manage badly."

"I never should have dreamed you thought of all these things, Bertha.
You seem so serene and happy."

"I am. It's the one subject I ever worry about. I'm always prepared for
the worst."

"And I'm quite sure you've no cause to be. Why not wait till trouble
comes?" suggested Madeline.

"Why, then it would be too late. No, I want to ward it off long before
there's any danger."

"I think it's very unlike you--almost morbid--bothering about
possibilities that will never happen."

"I daresay it is, in a way. But, you know, I fancy I've second sight
sometimes. What I feel with us is that things are too smooth, too calm,
a little dull. Something ought to happen."

"You're looking so pretty, too," said Madeline rather irrelevantly.

"I'm glad to hear it; but I only want one person to think so."

"But it's obvious that he does; he's very proud of you."

"I sometimes think he's too much accustomed to me. He takes me as a
matter of course."

"If that is so, I daresay you'll be able to alter matters," said
Madeline, getting up to go.

"Yes, I daresay I shall; it only needs a little readjusting," Bertha
said.

They shook hands in cordial fashion. They did not belong to the gushing
school, and, notwithstanding their really deep mutual affection, neither
would ever have dreamed of kissing the other.

As soon as Madeline had gone Bertha went and looked steadily and
seriously in the glass, for some considerable time. She thought on the
whole that it was true that she was looking pretty: on this subject she
was perfectly calm, cool and unbiassed, as if judging the appearance of
a stranger. For, though she naturally liked to be admired, as all women
do, she was entirely without that fluffy sort of vanity, that weak
conceit, so indulgent to itself, that makes nearly all pretty women
incapable of perceiving when they are beginning to go off, or unwilling
to own it to themselves.

The one person for whose admiration and interest she cared for more and
more, her Percy, she fancied was growing rather cooler. This crumpled
rose-leaf distressed her extremely.

At this moment he arrived home. She heard his voice and his step, and
waited for him to come up, with an increasing vividness of colour and
expression, with a look of excited animation, that in so sophisticated a
woman was certainly, after ten years, a remarkable tribute to a
husband.