"I say! Herbert never gives himself airs!"
"They both did—to me. They have quite different ways from us, and they make one feel it. They have family prayers—we don't. They have ascetic ideas about bringing up children—I haven't. Elsie would think it self-indulgent and abominable to stay in bed to breakfast—I don't. The fact is, all her interests and ideals are quite different from mine, and I am rather tired of being made to feel inferior."
"Daphne! what rubbish! I'm certain Elsie French never had such an idea in her head. She's awfully soft and nice; I never saw a bit of conceit in her."
"She's soft outside and steel inside. Well, never mind! we don't get on. She's the old America, I'm the new," said Daphne, half frowning, half laughing; "and I'm as good as she."
"You're a very good-looking woman, anyway," said Roger, admiring the vision of her among the warm browns and shining whites of her wrap. "Much better-looking than when I married you." He slipped an arm under the cloak and gave her small waist a squeeze.
Daphne turned her eyes upon him. In their black depths his touch had roused a passion which was by no means all tenderness. There was in it something threatening, something intensely and inordinately possessive. "That means that you didn't think me good-looking at all, as compared with—Chloe?" she said insistently.
"Really, Daphne!"—Roger withdrew his arm with a rather angry laugh—"the way you twist what one says! I declare I won't make you any more pretty speeches for an age."
Daphne scarcely replied; but there dawned on her face the smile—melting, provocative, intent—which is the natural weapon of such a temperament. With a quick movement she nestled to her husband's side, and Roger was soon appeased.
The visit which followed always counted in Roger Barnes's memory as the first act of the tragedy, the first onset of the evil that engulfed him.