with irony, her assumed
indifference with indifference. He had learned one of the most important
lessons of life--never to quarrel with a woman. Whoever has so far erred
has been foolish indeed. It is the worst of policy, to say nothing of
its being the worst of art; and life should never be without art. It
is absurd to be perfectly natural; anything, anybody can be that.
Well, Captain Hume Vidall was something of an artist, more, however,
in principle than by temperament. He refused to recognise the rather
malicious adroitness with which Marion turned his remarks again upon
himself, twisted out of all semblance. He was very patient. He inquired
quietly, and as if honestly interested, about Frank, and said--because
he thought it safest as well as most reasonable--that, naturally, they
must have been surprised at his marrying a native; but he himself had
seen some such marriages turn out very well--in Japan, India, the South
Sea Islands, and Canada. He assumed that Marion's sister-in-law was
beautiful, and then disarmed Marion by saying that he thought of going
down to Greyhope immediately, to call on General Armour and Mrs. Armour,
and wondered if she was going back before the end of the season.

Quick as Marion was, this was said so quietly that she did not quite see
the drift of it. She had intended staying in London to the end of the
season, not because she enjoyed it, but because she was determined to
face Frank's marriage at every quarter, and have it over, once for all,
so far as herself was concerned. But now, taken slightly aback, she
said, almost without thinking, that she would probably go back soon--she
was not quite sure; but certainly her father and mother would be glad to
see Captain Vidall at any time.

Then, without any apparent relevancy, he asked her if Mrs. Frank Armour
still wore her Indian costume. In any one else the question had seemed
impertinent; in him it had a touch of confidence, of the privilege of
close friendship. Then he said, with a meditative look and a very calm,
retrospective voice, that he was once very much in love with a native
girl in India, and might have become permanently devoted to her, were it
not for the accident of his being ordered back to England summarily.

This was a piece of news which cut two ways. In the first place it
lessened the extraordinary character of Frank's marriage, and it roused
in her an immediate curiosity--which a woman always feels in the past
"affa