"Never mind!" said he soothingly. "It will go away."
Lady Tamworth glared, that is, as well as she could; nature had not really adapted her for glaring. "I have an intuition," she resumed, "that this is what the suburbs mean." And she waved her hand comprehensively.
"They are perhaps a trifle excessive," he returned. "But then you needn't have come."
"Oh, yes! Clients of Sir John." Lady Tamworth sighed and sank with a weary elegance into a chair. Mr. Dale interpreted the sigh. "Ah! A wife's duties," he began.
"No man can know," she interrupted, and she spread out her hands in pathetic forgiveness of an over-exacting world. Her companion laughed brutally. "You are rude!" she said and laughed too. And then, "Tell me something new!"
"I met an admirer of yours to-day."
"But that's nothing new." She looked up at him with a plaintive reproach.
"I will begin again," he replied submissively. "I walked down the
Mile-End road this morning to Sir John's jute-factory."
"You fail to interest me," she said with some emphasis.
"I am so sorry. Good-bye!"