to stay, and they said there was nothing but beer and
sherry, and the fragments of a previous feast, and they were blessed
if they'd go near the old trout again."

"An elegant expression!" said Beth. "It gives the measure of the mind
it comes from. Please don't introduce the person who uses it to me.
But as to Sir George Galbraith, you need not be afraid that _he_ will
accept hospitality and criticise it in that spirit. He will neither
grumble at a cutlet, nor describe his hostess by a vulgar epithet
after eating it."

She shut her mouth hard after speaking. Disillusion is a great
enlightener; our insight is never so clear as when it is turned on the
character of a person in whom we used to believe; and as Dan gradually
revealed himself to Beth, trait by trait, a kind of distaste seized
upon her, a want of respect, which found involuntary expression in
trenchant comments upon his observations and in smart retorts. She did
not seek sympathy from him now for the way in which she had been
slighted at the ball, knowing perfectly well that he was more likely
to blame her than anybody else. He had, in fact, by this time, so far
as any confidence she might have reposed in him was concerned, dropped
out of her life completely, and left her as friendless and as much
alone as she would have been with the veriest stranger.

That night when she went home she felt world-worn and weary, but next
morning, out in the garden with Sir George Galbraith budding roses,
she became young again. Before they had been together half-an-hour she
was chatting to him with girlish confidence, telling him about her
attempts to cultivate her mind, her reading and writing, to all of
which he listened without any of that condescension in his manner
which Dan displayed when perchance he was in a good-humour and Beth
had ventured to expand. Sir George was genuinely interested.

Dan came in punctually to lunch, for a wonder. He glanced at Beth's
animated face sharply when he entered, but took no further notice of
her. He was one of those husbands who have two manners, a coarse one
for their families, and another, much more polished, which they assume
when it is politic to be refined. But Dan's best behaviour sat ill
upon him, because it was lacking in sincerity, and Beth suffered all
through lunch because of the obsequious pose he thought it proper to
assume towards his distinguished guest.

After lunch, when Sir George had gone, he took up his favouri