"You must be sure to do me credit, my dear boy," said my wife, gruffly. "You've glanced over my wardrobe, have you not?"
The hot blood came into my adopted cheeks at the suggestion.
"I--I've been too--ah--busy to look into the--ah--matter," I faltered. "Damn it, Caroline, don't be so confoundedly superior! I'm crushed and discouraged. That's straight. Give me a word of advice, will you? What shall I wear to-night? I don't want to make a fool of myself before Suzanne."
"Poor Suzanne!" growled Caroline, somewhat irrelevantly, I thought. "She must have had a day of it! Tell her you'll wear the dress I wore at the Leonards' dinner-party last week. You needn't say much about my hair. Suzanne'll know what to do with it."
Her hand, or rather mine, was on the knob of the door, when a hideous and persistent horror that had haunted me for some time forced me to say, in Caroline's most insistent treble:
"Why--oh, why--did you allow Edgerton to ask that infernal Yamama to come here to-night? It was madness, Caroline."
"Call me Reginald," interposed my wife, coolly.
"It was madness, I say--ah--Reginald. It was that--or worse."
My heart beat fast in Caroline's bosom.
"What do you mean?" asked my wife, thrusting my face forward, and transfixing me with my own eyes.