als served
regularly at a stated hour; why should she find infinite enjoyment in
arranging a festivity in a rush and scramble, instead of making her
plans with due leisure and decorum; why should she wear the latest Paris
fashions on a day when the thermometer pointed to rain, and walk about
in the sunshine in an ulster and deerstalker?--these, and many similar
questions, were as puzzling to him as the fact that she found it
absolutely impossible to do a thing twice over in the same way, or to
master the very rudiments of method.

Geoffrey inherited the business instincts which had made his fathers
successful above their competitors, and when he had become temporary
owner of Knock, he had striven hard to introduce order and punctuality
into the establishment, with more success in the servants' hall than in
those regions where the mistress reigned supreme.

Esmeralda was a devoted wife, who would have gone through fire and water
to ensure his happiness; she would have shared his poverty with a
smiling face, and have worked her fingers to the bone on his behalf, but
she seemed quite incapable of replacing the match-box on his dressing-
room mantelpiece when she had borrowed it for her own use, or of
refraining from taking his nail-scissors downstairs and then forgetting
where she had put them.

Geoffrey on his part adored his beautiful wife, and would have fought a
dozen dragons on her behalf, but when he groped in the dark for his
matches, and knocked his pet ornaments off the chimney-piece, and barked
his knee against a chair, and tried vainly to get out of the room
through a blank wall--well, he was only a man after all, and he was not
precisely lamb-like in temper.

Some such incident had happened this afternoon when the husband had made
a complaining remark, and the wife had poured oil on the troubled waters
by murmured allusions to people who were not really men, but "finnicky
old maids." Geoffrey had stalked majestically from the room, leaving
Esmeralda to reflect sadly how very unsatisfactory it was to quarrel
when your adversary was dignified and English. With either of her three
brothers such an introduction would have meant an enjoyable and lengthy
wrangle; even "Saint Bridget" could snap on occasion, while Pixie was
capable of screaming, "It is not--it is not!" until her breath failed,
for pure love of contradiction.

Esmeralda yawned, and wondered what in the world she could do to while
away the long