"Worse and worse! The boy will be certain to fall in love with you."
"Do you think so?" asked Mrs. Hadwell, eagerly.
"I think it won't be your fault if he doesn't," responded her husband with acerbity.
"Well, at all events the girl won't fall in love with you," said Mrs. Hadwell with a twinkle in her eye.
Her spouse grunted something unintelligible.
"Not if she sees you with that expression on your face," went on Mrs. Hadwell, rather sadly. "It always seems so strange to me that a man of your experience and charm—a finished man of the world, in other words—should give way to these useless moods."
Mr. Hadwell's brow slightly cleared in spite of his efforts to hide the fact.
"If I had seen when I first met you," went on Mrs. Hadwell in chastened accents, "that, beneath the mask of courtly politeness and delicate flattery, you concealed the nature of a gloomy tyrant."
"Da—I mean, confound it all!" said Mr. Hadwell, much affected, "what on earth do you want, Estelle?"
"Why, I'm afraid I don't quite understand you," said Mrs. Hadwell, raising her pretty eyebrows in pained surprise.