et the eyes of Lady Holme. She
felt annoyed; not because Sir Donald was looking at her, but because his
son was not.

How these women talked about their husbands! Lady Cardington, who was
a widow, spoke of husbands as if they were a race which was gradually
dying out. She thought the modern woman was beginning to get a little
tired of the institution of matrimony, and to care much less for men
than was formerly the case. Being contradicted by Mrs. Trent, she gave
her reasons for this belief. One was that whereas American matinee girls
used to go mad over the "leading men" of the stage they now went mad
over the leading women. She also instanced the many beautiful London
women, universally admired, who were over thirty and still remained
spinsters. Mrs. Trent declared that they were abnormal, and that, till
the end of time, women would always wish to be wives. Mrs. Wolfstein
agreed with her on various grounds. One was that it was the instinct
of woman to buy and to rule, and that if she were rich she could
now acquire a husband as, in former days, people acquired slaves--by
purchase. This remark led to the old question of American heiresses and
the English nobility, and to a prolonged discussion as to whether or not
most women ruled their husbands.

Women nearly always argue from personal experience, and consequently
Lady Cardington--whose husband had treated her badly--differed on this
point from Mrs. Wolfstein, who always did precisely what she pleased,
regardless of Mr. Wolfstein's wishes. Mrs. Trent affirmed that for her
part she thought women should treat their husbands as they treated their
servants, and dismiss them if they didn't behave themselves, without
giving them a character. She had done so twice, and would do it a
third time if the occasion arose. Sally Perceval attacked her for this,
pleading slangily that men would be men, and that their failings
ought to be winked at; and Miss Burns, as usual, brought the marital
proceedings of African savages upon the carpet. Lady Manby turned the
whole thing into a joke by a farcical description of the Private Enquiry
proceedings of a jealous woman of her acquaintance, who had donned a
canary-coloured wig as a disguise, and dogged her husband's footsteps
in the streets of London, only to find that he went out at odd times to
visit a grandmother from whom he had expectations, and who happened to
live in St. John's Wood.

The foreign waiters, who moved round the tabl