"Yes," he answered, "I have got to go to a meeting of the Executive Committee of the St. Filipe. There is some sort of a row; I don't know what. How are you going to amuse yourself."
"By doing my duty."
"Do you find duty amusing then; I shouldn't have suspected it."
"Oh, duty's only another name for necessity. I'm going to the theatre with Fred Rangely. He wrote an article for the Observer in favor of that great booby Stanton's having the statue. It was a very lukewarm plea, but I asked him to do it, and as a reward"—
"He is allowed the inestimable boon of taking you to the theatre," finished her husband, "I must say, Dian, that you are, on the whole, the shrewdest woman I know."
"Thank you. I must be just, you know," she returned smiling as brilliantly as if her husband were to be won again.
It was not without reason that Mrs. Staggchase had spoken of herself and her husband as a model couple. Given her theory of married life, nothing could be more satisfactory and consistent than the way in which she lived up to it. Her ideal of matrimony was a sort of mutual laisser faire, conducted with the utmost propriety and politeness. She made an especial point of being as attractive to her husband as to any other man; and she had the immense advantage of never having been in love with anybody but herself and of being philosophical enough not to consider the good things of conversation wasted if they were said for his exclusive benefit. She had no children, and had once remarked in answer to the question whether she regretted this, "There must be some pleasure in having sons old enough to flirt with you; but I don't know of anything else I have lost that I have reason to regret."
Her husband, thorough man of the world as he was, and indeed perhaps for that very reason, never outgrew a pleased surprise that he found his wife so perennially entertaining. He was not unwilling that she should exercise her fascinations on others when she chose, since he had no feeling toward her sufficiently warm to engender anything like jealousy; but he appreciated her to the full.
He rose from his seat and walked to the sideboard, where he selected a cigar.
"I must say," he observed, between the puffs as he lighted it, "that you are justice incarnate. You have always kept accounts squared with me most beautifully."