“Robert wouldn’t admit that! No doubt he thinks himself the laggard, and you just such another paragon as you have described.”
Jean pursed her lips in a whimsical grimace.
“No! The droll part of it is, he does not. He doesn’t understand me one bit; I’m a continual enigma to him. Half the time he is puzzled out of his wits, and the other half he is—shocked. Such eyes! You should see them staring at me, growing bigger and bigger, when I let myself go, and grumble or rage. He disapproves, but he makes excuses, because I am I, and he loves me, and wouldn’t change me for the greatest paragon alive.” She was silent, smiling mischievously to herself for several minutes, then burst out suddenly:
“Can you imagine it, Vanna? I sometimes wish he were not quite so good! It’s aggravating for a sinner like me to be shown up continually against such a contrast. And sometimes it lands one in such fixes... I could tell you such stories of this year!” She snuggled back against her cushions. “Ah, it is good to have you here. I have so longed for a girl to talk to... The first six months we went about a great deal, paying visits to his friends. The first time I asked him to describe the people, as I knew them only by name. ‘Oh, Meg!’ he said, ‘Meg is the simplest of creatures: kindly, and easy-going as you find ’em. You’ll feel at home in five minutes. No fuss, no ceremony. The sort of house where you feel absolutely at home.’ Well, what would you expect from that description? I saw a vision of a suburban villa, and a stout, frumpy woman with a fat smile, and packed a modest little semi-evening frock to let her down gently. My dear! it was a mansion, and she was the very smartest creature I have ever beheld. The first glimpse of her in afternoon clothes took away my breath; but there was worse to come. She had asked a dozen people to dinner to meet us, and while we were dressing—it was a summer evening, and quite light—I saw carriages bowling up to the door, and visions in satin dresses trailing up the steps. There was nothing for it; I put on my wretched little frock, eating my heart out the while at the thought of all my trousseau grandeurs lying useless at home, and descended—the bride, the guest of honour—the worst dressed woman in the room! Can you imagine my suffering?”
Vanna smiled. She could; and also the manner in which Jean would upbraid her husband after the fray.
“And Robert? What had he to say? How did he look when he first saw you alone?”
“Radiant, my dear. Beaming! Absolutely, utterly content. Blankly astonished and dismayed to find that I was not the same. Utterly unconscious that my dress had been any different from the rest. Blindly convinced that there had not been one in the room to touch it!”
They both laughed, a tender indulgence shining in their eyes. It was the look with which women condone the indiscretion of a child; but Jean was still anxious to expound her own side of the situation.
“Yes! It’s charming; but you’ve no idea how trying it can be at times. Other women lament because their husbands complain of their meals. I wish to goodness Robert would complain. It would make things easier with the maids. Good plain cooks need so much keeping up to the mark, and I never get a chance of grumbling. When the things are unusually bad, and I am mentally rehearsing what I shall say in the kitchen next morning—‘you really must make the soup stronger. The gravy was quite white... Why did the pudding fall to pieces?’—you know the kind of thing—Robert will lean back with a sigh, and say, ‘I have had a good dinner. You’ve eclipsed yourself to-night. I am getting quite spoiled.’ I glare at him, but it’s no use. He says, ‘What is the matter, dear?’ and I see a smug smile on Brewster’s face, and know she will go straight into the kitchen and repeat the whole tale. How can I grumble after that? The wind is taken completely out of my sails. Sometimes I think that for practical, everyday life a saint is even more trouble than a sinner. Then the friends he brings here! You never knew such a motley throng. It may be any one from a duke (figuratively a duke. He has met all sorts of bigwigs, ‘east of Suez’) to a vagrant with broken boots, and not an ‘h’ in his composition. And it’s always the same description: ‘do you mind if I bring a man home to dinner to-night? I met him at —’ some outlandish place—‘and he was awfully decent to me. He is passing through town, and I should like to have him here. Such a good fellow!’ Then, of course, if I have rice pudding, it’s the duke; or if I order in an ice, it’s the vagrant. Once or twice I’ve tried cross-questioning, but it’s no use. If I ask, ‘is he a gentleman, Robert?’ he looks at me with his biggest eyes, and asks, ‘would I ask any one to meet you, who was not?’ But, bless him! his ideas and mine on that point do not agree. So here, my dear, you behold the novel spectacle of a woman who has only one complaint to make of her husband, that he is too good! But he loves me, Vanna, more than ever. We haven’t grown a bit stodgy, only just lately I’ve been so ill and depressed. It will be better now you are here... Now tell me about yourself. You’ve had a sad time, but you don’t look sad. You look happy and well. Vanna! you are blushing. What is it? Tell me. There is something—I know there is. Tell me at once!”
“Yes, there is something.” Vanna braced herself against the chair, a thrill of nervous foreboding coursing through her veins. She drew off her left glove, which she had purposely left on during tea, and held out the hand, on the third finger of which sparkled a large square diamond. “There is that!”