"I'm perfectly certain Martin adores me," says Mrs. Branscombe, indignantly, "and I couldn't be severe or dignified to save my life. Clarissa, you must forgive me if I remove Dorian at once, before he says anything worse. He is quite untrustworthy. Good-by, dearest, and be sure you come up to see me to-morrow. I want to ask you ever so many more questions."
"Cards from the duchess for a garden-party," says Georgie, throwing the invitations in question across the breakfast-table to her husband. It is quite a week later, and she has almost settled down into the conventional married woman, though not altogether. To be entirely married—that is, sedate and sage—is quite beyond Georgie. Just now some worrying thought is oppressing her, and spoiling the flavor of her tea; her kidney loses its grace, her toast its crispness. She peeps at Dorian from behind the huge silver urn that seeks jealously to conceal her from view, and says, plaintively,—
"Is the duchess a very grand person, Dorian?"
"She is an awfully fat person, at all events," says Dorian, cheerfully. "I never saw any one who could beat her in that line. She'd take a prize, I think. She is not a bad old thing when in a good temper, but that is so painfully seldom. Will you go?"
"I don't know,"—doubtfully. Plainly, she is in the lowest depths of despair. "I—I—think I would rather not."
"I think you had better, darling."
"But you said just now she was always in a bad temper."
"Always? Oh, no; I am sure I couldn't have said that. And, besides, she won't go for you, you know, even if she is. The duke generally comes in for it. And by this time he rather enjoys it, I suppose,—as custom makes us love most things."
"But, Dorian, really now, what is she like?"