"Dearest," said Lady Carlyon, laying her little hand upon his sleeve, "there is but one attitude to take: we must be friendly with her. Remember Senator March's position and how you stand with General Talbott."
"I know it all," answered Sir Percy doggedly.
They were standing together, and Sir Percy took his wife's hand and kissed it.
"You are the better diplomatist of the two," he said; "I could not bring myself to mention Alicia March's name. If it hadn't been for your readiness Senator March must have suspected something. It must be hard for you?"
"Very! But I have been preparing myself for this complication ever since you told me that story. After all, it is quite natural that Mrs. March should make a fight for her position in the world. It isn't every woman who has it in her to be a Louise la Vallière."
"It is certainly not in Alicia March; however, there is nothing so cowardly as for a man to complain of a woman. I should be glad to take all the pain of my own wrongdoing, but you, poor, innocent child, must suffer too."
"Let us not think of it," said Lady Carlyon, drawing her husband's lips to hers.
Sir Percy said nothing, but his kiss and his eyes were eloquent of love and gratitude. Then Lady Carlyon went into the drawing-room and Sir Percy followed her. Deep in his heart he was a sentimentalist, and he loved his wife with single-hearted devotion. He could not but compare her, as she moved about the room, her white cloth gown trailing upon the floor, with the slim, pretty and inconsequent young girl whose waltzing had first charmed him. She was still slim and pretty, but she had grown wise with soft, sweet wisdom. It was she, now, who thought for him, smoothed over the rough places, practised an easy and graceful self-control, and was all that the wife of an Ambassador should be.
The tea-tray was brought in, and Lady Carlyon gave Sir Percy his tea, a thing comforting in itself, with the same gracious air that she would have handed it to the Ambassador of France.
"It was in the ball-room that I first saw you, waltzing with young Stanley, the naval officer," said Sir Percy, drinking his tea with calm deliberation, "and it was in the library that Lord Baudesert warned me that a diplomat should never marry an American, and I swore to him I never would."