The dinner proceeded in silence. Frank was eating too rapidly to have leisure for anything else; Daisy's angry spirit would not permit her to talk. As she laid down her knife and fork, Frank pressed her to take some more mutton, but she curtly refused it.
"I have said no once. This is luncheon; not dinner."
Frank Raynor had become accustomed to hearing his wife speak to him in cold, resentful tones: but to-day they sounded especially cold. He had long ago put it down in his own mind to dissatisfaction at their blighted prospects; blighted, at least, in comparison with those they had so sanguinely entertained when wandering together side by side at Trennach and picturing the future to each other. It only made him the more patient, the more tender with her.
"Mrs. Townley has written to ask me to go to her. She is back again in Westbourne Terrace. She bids me say she shall be happy to see you to dinner at seven. But I suppose you will not go."
"Yes, I will go," said Frank, rapidly revolving ways and means, as regarded the exigencies of his patients. "I think I can get away for an hour or two, Daisy. Is it dress?"
"Just as you please," was the frosty answer. "Mrs. Townley says nothing about dress; she would be hardly likely to do so; but she is accustomed to proper ways."
"And how shall you go, my dear?" resumed Frank, passing over the implication with his usual sweetness of temper. "You had better have a cab."
"I intend to have one," said Daisy.
She arrayed herself in some of her smartest things, for the spirit of bravado was upon her: if her husband did not choose to dress, she should: and set out in a cab for Westbourne Terrace. Once there, she put away her troubles; outwardly at any rate: and her sister never suspected that anything was amiss.
"I shall give you a surprise, Daisy," said Mrs. Townley in the course of the afternoon. "An old beau of yours is coming to dinner."