"Sorry to treat you shabbily, old man," he said, when they were alone. "Just a little necessary economy. It won't last long."
Paul nodded, smiling, and quietly proffered his own cigar-case.
"At least you'll not refuse one of mine, Theo," he said; and their talk drifted into the fertile channel of "shop," and the prospect of serious collision with Russia, which at that time loomed on the political horizon.
Paul was thus left to draw his own conclusions, which were not complimentary to his friend's wife. For reserve has its drawbacks, like every other virtue; and those who practise it often, forget that if there is a time for silence, there is also a time for speech.
Evelyn clung tenaciously to her disapproval of the whole proceeding. The scarcity of stores, and of pleasant little dinners, were the only retrenchments that directly disturbed her comfort, and she made the most of them, though the problems of housekeeping fell mainly upon Honor's shoulders. The girl's readiness to accept Evelyn's burden, as a matter of course, could not fail to rouse Desmond's admiration: and these three months of friction and stress, of working bravely together for one end, went far to strengthen the bond of their friendship.
Evelyn contented herself with a thinly veiled air of martyrdom, and with raising objections whenever opportunity offered. Only after Denvil's first dinner did she venture a direct attack. For on this occasion economy was not. Wine and cigars appeared with the dessert; and the two men sat an inordinately long while over both. But the inner significance of her husband's acts being a sealed book to Evelyn Desmond, she spent the evening in a state of suppressed irritation, which, on the Boy's departure, overflowed in petulant reproof.
"Why did you have everything different to-night just because of Mr Denvil?" she demanded in a note of challenge.
"Because I preferred it so."
Desmond's tone was polite, but final. He sat down and opened a book in self-defence. But Evelyn was not to be baulked by a policy of masterly inactivity. She remained standing before him.