"Vera is ten years younger since her second marriage," Lady Susie told people; "Claude aids and abets her in everything frivolous. She used to be just a little too dreamy—Oh, you may call it 'side,' but that it never was. But she is certainly more sociable now; more eagerly interested in the things that interest other people. Claude has made her forget that she is a poet's daughter. She is as keen as mustard about their house and racing stables at Newmarket. She goes to all the big cricket matches with him, things she never thought of in Provana's time. They are not like commonplace husband and wife, but like boy and girl lovers, pleased with everything. I don't wonder Mr. Symeon thinks she has degenerated. He says she is losing her other-world look, and is fast becoming a mere mortal."
"And as a mere mortal I hope she won't allow Rutherford to spend all her money," said Susie's confidant, an iron-grey bachelor of fifty, who spent the greater part of his life sitting in pretty women's pockets. "A racing stud is a pretty deep pit for gold at the best; but a man who has married a triple millionaire's widow may safely allow himself one hobby. Rutherford goes in for too many things: his dirigible balloons and his aeroplane, his racing cars and his motor launches: his Ostend holiday, where people say he is hardly ever out of the gambling rooms. Your friend had better keep an eye on her pass-book."
"Vera!" cried Susie, with uplifted eyebrows. "Vera look at a pass-book!"
"As a banker's widow she might be supposed to know that there are such financial thermometers. She must have learnt something of business from Provana."
"She never took the slightest interest in his business, and he was far too noble to degrade her by talking of money."
"A pity," said the bachelor; "when a woman's husband is a great financier he may want to talk about money; and his wife ought to be interested in things that are of vital concern for him."
"That's a counsel of perfection," said Susie, "and very few women rise to it. All I have ever known about my husband is that he is interested in railways and insurance companies and things, and that when any of them are going wrong I'd better not talk of my dressmaker's bills, or let him see my pass-book."
"Then you know what a pass-book is."
"I have to," sighed Susie, "for my normal state is an overdrawn account. I think the letters n.e. and n.s. are quite the horridest in the alphabet."
"Yet you never ask a friend to help you out of a fix?"