"Well, if I were in your shoes and had such a pretty wife I should not leave her to go picnicking about the world with such an attractive man as the Baron."
Leonard gave an uneasy little laugh, meant to convey the idea of supreme security.
"I'm not jealous of de Cazalet," he said. "Surely you don't call him an attractive man."
"Dangerously attractive," replied Mrs. St. Aubyn, gazing at the distant Baron, whose florid good looks were asserting themselves at the further end of the table, on Christabel's left hand—she had Mr. St. Aubyn's grey, contented face, glistening with dinner, on her right. "He is just the kind of man I should have fallen in love with when I was your wife's age."
"Really," exclaimed Leonard, incredulously. "But I suppose after you married St. Aubyn, you left off falling in love."
"Of course. I did not put myself in the way of temptation. I should never have encouraged such a man—handsome, accomplished, unscrupulous—as Baron de Cazalet."
"I don't think his good looks or his unscrupulousness will make any difference to my wife," said Leonard. "She knows how to take care of herself."
"No doubt. But that does not release you from the duty of taking care. You had better go to the picnic."
"My dear Mrs. St. Aubyn, if I were to go now, after what you have just said to me, you might suppose I was jealous of de Cazalet; and that is just the one supposition I could not stand," answered Leonard. "It would take a dozen such fascinating men to shake my confidence in my wife: she is not an acquaintance of yesterday, remember: I have known her all my life."
Mrs. St. Aubyn sighed and shook her head. She was one of those stupid well-meaning women whose mission in life is to make other people uncomfortable—with the best intentions. She kept a steady look-out for the approaching misfortunes of her friends. She was the first to tell an anxious mother that her youngest boy was sickening for scarlet fever, or that her eldest girl looked consumptive. She prophesied rheumatics and bronchitis to incautious people who went out in wet weather—she held it as a fixed belief that all her friends' houses were damp. It was in vain that vexed householders protested against such a suspicion, and held forth upon the superiority of their drainage, the felt under their tiles, their air bricks, and ventilators. "My dear, your house is damp," she would reply conclusively. "What it would be if you had not taken those precautions I shudder to imagine—but I only know that I get the shivers every time I sit in your drawing-room."