"I sometimes feel as if you kept me out of everything," she said at last.
Estelle was feeling her way; she thought she might collect a few extras to add to her side of the bargain.
Apparently she was right. Winn was all eagerness to meet her. "How do you mean?" he asked anxiously.
"Oh," she said contemplatively, "such heaps of things! One thing, I don't expect you've ever noticed that you never ask your friends to stay here. I've had all mine; you've never even asked your mother! It's as if you were ashamed of me."
"I'll ask her like a shot if you like," he said eagerly. Estelle was not anxious for a visit from Lady Staines, but she thought it sounded better to begin with her. She let her pass.
"It's not only your relations," she went on; "it's your friends. What must they think of a wife they are never allowed to see?"
"But they're such a bachelor crew," he objected. "It never occurred to me you'd care for them—just ordinary soldier chaps like me, not a bit clever or amusing."
Estelle did not say that crews of bachelors are seldom out of place in the drawing-room of a young and pretty woman. She looked past her husband to where in fancy she beheld the aisle of a church and the young Adonis, who had been his best man, with eyes full of reverence and awe gazing at her approaching figure.
"I thought," she said indifferently, "you liked that man you insisted on having instead of Lord Arlington at the wedding?"
"I do," said Winn. "He's my best friend. I meet him sometimes in town, you know."