"I'm damned if I know; I've never visited a friend who made such a marriage as mine. I should have pitied the poor devil profoundly if I had. Good night, old chap."
The hall door shut, and Chetwynd went slowly, sorrowfully back to the drawing-room.
"I hope you have disgraced me enough to-night," he said stormily.
"Where's the disgrace, I should like to know, in inviting a couple of old friends into one's own house?" demanded Saidie aggressively.
Chetwynd promptly turned his back upon her. "I am addressing my wife," he said frigidly.
"Yes; I would like to see you talking to me in that tone of voice," returned his sister-in-law.
"Bella, what have you to say for yourself? Have you no self-respect whatever, and no consideration for your husband's position?"
"Oh, I'm sick of hearing about your position," said his wife pettishly. "In the days when you had not any, we were a lot happier. You didn't turn up your nose at my associates when I was on the boards at the Band Box! Everything was charming. You laughed then at what you now call "vulgar," and you thought it good fun, and you would have taken the property man to your heart if I had told you he was my brother. But now I am your wife it is quite a different tale. My friends are too common for you to mix with. By the Lord! I'm not at all certain whether you think me good enough for you, myself."
"Bella, Bella!"
"Oh! Yes, it is easy enough to look broken-hearted. How dare you turn my friends out of the place? It is you, not I, who have brought disgrace upon us by introducing a stranger here and mortifying and humbling me in front of him. If the Dosses are good enough for me, they are good enough for my husband."