"By Jove, Addie," exclaims that young gentleman one Saturday afternoon, while turning over the contents of her card-tray, "you are in the swim, and no mistake—Lady Crawford, Mr. and the Misses Pelham-Browne, General Hawksley, Sir Alfred and Lady Portrann, the Dean of St. Margaret's, and Mrs. Vavasour, the Dowager Countess of Deenmore and—do my eyes deceive me?—no—Admiral and Mrs. Beecher of the Abbey, Greystones. I'll trouble you for a half-glass of sherry, Goggles. Thanks. I feel reasonably convalescent now. Admiral and Mrs. Beecher of the Abbey, Greystones! After that, I feel equal to anything!"
"We weren't at home on the day they called," laughs Pauline. "I was so sorry, for I meant to have faced them gallantly."
"Well, Addie, well," exclaims Robert triumphantly, "wasn't I a good prophet? Didn't I tell you how it would be? Didn't I tell you you'd open the gates for him and give him the run of the county—eh? I expect he's precious glad now he didn't let you slip through his fingers, Addie!"
"He doesn't care a straw," she answers contemptuously—"I know he doesn't. He wouldn't care if he had the run of twenty counties unless he liked the people personally—unless they were clever, or amusing, or took an interest in his affairs."
"Stuff, Addie, stuff; you don't know what you are talking about. Armstrong is just as pleased as Punch that the neighbors are looking you up. I saw it in his face at once. Why else did he give up three afternoons in the last fortnight to return those calls with Pauline and you, I should like to know?"
"He did that because it would not have been the thing for me, a bride, to return the first time without my—my husband; it would have been bad form, but it bored him awfully—I saw it did," she persists; "and he did not care for the people either. He was awfully disgusted with Lady Crawford—at the way she talked and the questions she asked me. He said afterward that he would not allow his wife to be patronized by such a meddlesome ill-bred woman as that."
Robert flushes angrily.
"That's because he does not understand. People of his class are always hunting up affronts, imagining they're being snubbed and patronized, when nothing of the kind is intended. I am perfectly certain that Lady Crawford meant only to act kindly in offering advice to you, a young girl unaccustomed to the etiquette of matronhood, without a mother to put you in the way of doing things."
"No," declares Addie, "she meant nothing of the kind. The way she looked at me through her gold-rimmed glasses, turned me round, commented on my dress, my appearance, my appointments altogether, and then informed me calmly that she thought I should do, was, to say the least of it, extremely impertinent and underbred; and I quite agree with my husband in the matter."
Robert and Pauline exchange a rapid glance: there is a storm-signal in the latter's eyes. So Robert wisely lets the matter drop, and busies himself with the card-basket.