“I believe it’s nothing but temper!” declared his hostess, jovially. “You’re rather out of it nowadays, aren’t you? When a man has a brilliant wife he must look to his laurels, eh? ’Pon my word, Robert, she’s quite cut you out. Every one’s talking about her book. Look at them now,” she jerked her head back towards the room—“all swinging incense. Why, you wicked creature, you never even told me she wrote. I believe you were jealous!”
She was walking with him towards the head of the stairs while she chattered. She was hitting a little at random, but it amused her to discover when the blows were felt. To do Lady Wilmot justice, her malice was not exclusively directed against her own sex. To exasperate a man afforded her on the whole more entertainment than she would have derived had her victim been feminine. “A man’s colossal vanity is so tempting,” she frequently observed. “I long to overthrow it. But then, I always had a taste for the impossible.”
Despite his utmost endeavors Robert could not make his rejoinders sound other than a trifle constrained.
“I admit I never took Cecily’s work very seriously,” he said. “That was my mistake. She never talked about it much herself, and—well, somehow one never thinks of one’s wife as a literary woman. But, my dear lady! jealous of her? What an idea!”
“Rather a good idea, eh? I didn’t know her well before she married, and you managed to give me quite a wrong impression of her, anyhow. I always pictured her a demure little country mouse, with scarcely a squeak in her. Look at her now!”
She put up her lorgnette. The rooms had thinned a little, and through the archway of the door they could both see Cecily, who, in the midst of a group of people, was talking animatedly.
“That’s La Roche leaning over the sofa,” said Lady Wilmot. “You know La Roche? He’s the latest dramatic critic in Paris. Supposed to be very brilliant, I hear. Graeme introduced him, I imagine. Graeme’s a tremendous admirer. You see he doesn’t leave the field to La Roche, in spite of the introduction. And there’s Mayne, of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?” inquired Robert, quickly. Lady Wilmot assumed an innocent expression.
“Why not? Isn’t he your great friend, as well as Cecily’s?”
“Certainly,” was Robert’s immediate reply.