* * * * *
They had been discussing Nellie in the Stratton circle, as our best friends will when we are so fortunate as to interest them.
In the pretty sitting-room that overlooked the rippling water, Mrs. Stratton perched on the music stool, was giving, amid many interjections, an animated account of the opera: a dark-haired, grey-eyed, full-lipped woman of 30 or so, with decidedly large nose and broad rounded forehead, somewhat under the medium height apparently but pleasingly plump as her evening dress disclosed. She talked rapidly, in a sweet expressive voice that had a strange charm. Her audience consisted of an ugly little man, with greyish hair, who stood at a bookcase in the corner and made his remarks over his shoulder; a gloomy young man, who sat in a reclining chair, with his arm hanging listlessly by his side; and a tall dark-moustached handsome man, broadly built, who sat on the edge of a table smoking a wooden pipe, and who, from his observations, had evidently accompanied her home from the theatre after the second act. There was also her husband, who leant over her, his back turned to the others, unhooking her fur-edged opera cloak, a tall fair brown bearded man, evidently the elder by some years, whose blue eyes were half hidden beneath a strongly projected forehead. He fumbled with the hooks of the cloak, passing his hands beneath it, smiling slyly at her the while. She, flushing like a girl at the touch, talked away while pressing her knee responsively against his. It was a little love scene being enacted of which the others were all unconscious unless for a general impression that this long-married couple were as foolishly in love as ever and indulged still in all the mild raptures of lovers.
"Ever so much obliged," she said, pausing in her talk and looking at him at last, as he drew the cloak from her shoulders.
"You should be," he responded, straightening himself out. "It's quite a labour unhooking one of you fine ladies."
"Don't call me names, Harry, or I'll get somebody else to take it off next time. I'm afraid it's love's labour lost. It's quite chilly, and I think I'll wrap it round me."
"Well, if you will go about half undressed," he commented, putting the cloak round her again.
"Half undressed! You are silly. The worst of this room is there's no fire in it. I think one needs a fire even in summer time, when it's damp, to take the chill off. Besides, as Nellie says, a blazing fire is the most beautiful picture you can put in a room."
"Isn't Nellie coming to-night?" asked the man who smoked the wooden pipe.
"Why, of course, Ford. Haven't I told you she said on Thursday that she would come and bring the wild untamed bushman with her? Nellie always keeps her word."