Mrs. Amber had her hat and coat and
walking-shoes off, and the gas fire began to purr, and a heavenly
comfort visited her. She knew reluctantly that these matrons were
horribly wise women, after all. She looked into her mother's eyes, and
saw there the question which cried in her heart, but she could not
read it. It was too old for her.

Mrs. Amber said equably:

"Now I'll run into the kitchen and find what I shall find, my dear.
You're not to trouble yourself to think and tell me what; I was
housekeeping before you were born. And meanwhile, if I were you, I'd
undo my frock and take off my corsets and be really comfortable. You
be a good girl, dear, and do as you're told just this once, to please
your silly old mother."

Docilely Marie sat up, unhooked her trim skirt-band, and unfastened
her corsets. At once she felt lightened. _How_ wise these
dreadful matrons were! She did more; she cast her skirt and blouse
aside with the corsets, and when Mrs. Amber returned she found her
lying rest fully under the eiderdown, untrammelled, in thin petticoat
and camisole.

"Eggs?" said Marie, craning her neck to look. "They were for Osborn's
breakfast--two boiled eggs, mother."

"Well, they're poached now, duck," said Mrs. Amber; "they've gone to
glory. Let Osborn have bacon; there's half a dozen rashers in your
larder."

"He had bacon this morning."

"Let him have it again," said the comfortable lady.

"Julia's coming to dinner to-night," Marie confided to her mother.
"Osborn's dining with Mr. Rokeby, but he's sending us both to the
theatre. Isn't it kind of him?"

Mrs. Amber nodded smilingly.

"He hates me to be dull," said Marie.

Again Mrs. Amber nodded smilingly; she thought what a make-believe
world these young brides lived in, and then she sighed.

All that afternoon she tended Marie, and gave her tea, and fulfilled
her offer of setting the dinner forward before she went away, with the
inquiry still in her heart.

Marie was better.

She rose from her bed about six o'clock, pleased as a cat with the
warm room, and set about the business of her toilet. Sitting down to
the dressing-table, she looked long and earnestly at her face; the
rest she had taken had plumped and coloured it again, but there was a
something, a kind of frailty, a blue darkness under the eyes. Perhaps
it made her look less pretty? She was inclined to fret over it a
trifle. To counteract it she dressed her hair with a fluffy softness
unusu