of his to Northborough and the club.
He would come home with the latest news from that centre of the
universe, the latest gossip which had gone the rounds on 'Change and at
lunch, the newest stories of Mr. Venables and his friends, which were
invariably reproduced for Rachel's benefit with that slight but
unmistakable local accent of which these gentry were themselves all
unconscious. Steel had a wicked wit, and Rachel as a rule a sufficiently
appreciative smile, but this was to-night either lacking altogether or
of an unconvincing character. Rachel could never pretend, and her first
spontaneous remark was when her glass filled up with froth.

"Champagne!" said she, for they seldom drank it.

"It has been such a wretched day," explained Steel, "that I ordered it
medicinally. I am afraid it must have been perishing here, as it was in
the town. This is to restore your circulation."

"My circulation is all right," answered Rachel, too honest even to smile
upon the man with whom she was going to war. "I felt cold all the
morning, but I have been warm enough since the afternoon."

And that was very true, for excitement had made her blood run hot in
every vein; nor had Rachel often been more handsome, or less lovely,
than she was to-night, with her firm lip and her brooding eye.

"There was another reason for the champagne," resumed her husband, very
frankly for him, when at last they had the drawing-room to themselves.
"I am in disgrace with you, I believe, and I want to hear from you what
I have done."

"It is what you have not done," returned Rachel, as she stood
imperiously before the lighted fire; and her bosom rose and fell, white
as the ornate mantelpiece of Carrara marble which gleamed behind her.

"And what, may I ask, is my latest sin of omission?"

Rachel rushed to the point with a passionate directness that did her no
discredit.

"Why have you pretended all these months that you never were in
Australia in your life? Why did you never tell me that you knew
Alexander Minchin out there?"

And she held her breath against the worst that he could do, being well
prepared for him to lose first his color and then the temper which he
had never lost since she had known him; to fly into a fury, to curse her
up hill and down dale--in a word, to behave as her first husband had
done more than once, but this one never. What Rachel did not anticipate
was a smile that cloaked not a single particle of surprise, and the
l