irrelevance, in those rare moments when she was not absorbed in Mr. Gorst. Pretty Mildred and Mr. Gorst were flirting unabashed behind the roses, and it struck Anne that the Canon kept an alarmed and watchful eye upon their intercourse.

She tried

To Anne the dinner was intolerably long. to be patient with it, judging that its length was a measure of the height her hosts had risen to. There she did them an injustice; for in the matter of a menu the Hannays could not rise; for they lived habitually on a noble elevation.

At the other end of the table Mrs. Hannay called gaily on her guests to eat and drink. But, when the wine went round, Anne noticed that she whispered to the butler, and after that, the butler only made a feint of filling his master's glass, and turned a politely deaf ear to his protests. And then her voice rose.

"Lawson, that pineapple ice is delicious. Gould, hand the pineapple ice to Mr. Hannay. I adore pineapple ice," said Mrs. Hannay. "Wallie, you're drinking nothing. Fill Mr. Majendie's glass, Gould, fill it-fill it." She was the immortal soul of hospitality, was Mrs. Hannay.

In the drawing-room Mrs. Hannay again took possession of Anne and led her to the sofa. She fairly enthroned her there; she hovered round her; she put cushions at her head, and more cushions under her feet; for Mrs. Hannay liked to be comfortable herself, and to see every one comfortable about her. "You come," said she, "and sit down by me on this sofa, and let's have a cosy talk. That's it. Only you want another cushion. No? -Do-Won't you really? Then it's four for me," said Mrs. Hannay, supporting herself in various postures of

experimental comfort, "one for my back, two for my fat sides, and one for my head. Now I'm comfy. I adore cushions, don't you? My husband says I'm a little down cushion myself, so I suppose that's why."

Anne, in her mood, had crushed many innocent vulgarities before now; but she owned that she could no more have snubbed Mrs. Hannay effectually than you could snub a little down cushion. It would be impossible, she thought, to make any impression at all on that yielding surface. Impossible to take any impression from her, to say where her gaiety ended and her vulgarity began.

"Isn't it funny?" the little lady went on, unconscious of Mrs. Majendie's attitude. My husband's your husband's oldest friend. So I think you and I ought to be friends too."

Anne's face intimated that she hardly considered the chain of reasoning unbreakable; but Mrs. Hannay continued to play cheerful elaborations on the theme of friendship, till her husband appeared with the other three men. He had his hand on Majendie's shoulder, and Mrs. Hannay's soft smile drew Mrs. Majendie's attention to this manifestation of intimacy. And it dawned on Anne that Mrs. Hannay's gaiety would not end here; though it was here, with the mixing of the company, that her vulgarity would begin.

"Did you ever see such a pair? fonder of Wallie than he is of me.

I tell Lawson he's

I believe he'd go for nothing, if he

down on his knees and black his boots asked him. I'd do it myself, only you mustn't tell Lawson I said so." She paused. "I think Lawson wants to come and have a little talk with you."

Hannay approached heavily, and his wife gave up her

place to him, cushions and all. He seated himself heavily. His eyes wandered heavily to the other side of the room, following Majendie. And as they rested on his friend there was a light in them that redeemed their heaviness. He had come to Mrs. Majendie prepared for weighty

utterance.

"That man," said Hannay, "is the best man I know. You've married, dear lady, my dearest and most intimate friend. He's a saint-a Bayard." He flung the name at her defiantly, and with a gesture he emphasised the crescendo of his thought. "A preux chevalier, sans peur," said Mr. Hannay, "et sans reproche."

Having delivered his soul, he sat, still heavily, in silence.

Anne repressed the rising of her indignation. To her it was as if he had been defending her husband against some accusation brought by his wife.

And so, indeed, he was. Poor Hannay had been conscious of her attitude-conscious under her pure and austere eyes, of his own shortcomings, and it struck him. that Majendie needed some defence against her judgment of his taste in friendship.

When the door closed behind the Majendies, Mr. Gorst was left the last lingering guest.

"Poor Wallie," said Mrs. Hannay.

"Poor Wallie," said Mr. Hannay, and sighed.

"What do you think of her?" said the lady to Mr. Gorst.

"Oh, I think she's magnificent."

"Do you think he'll be able to live up to it?"

"Why not?" said Mr. Gorst cheerfully.

"Well, it wasn't very gay for him before he married, and I don't imagine it's going to be any gayer now."

"Now," said Mr. Hannay, "I understand what's meant by the solemnisation of holy matrimony. That woman would solemnise a farce at the Vaudeville, with Gwen Richards on."

"She very nearly solemnised my dinner," said Mrs. Hannay.

"She doesn't know," said Mr. Hannay, "what a dinner is. She's got no appetite herself, and she tried to take mine away from me. A regular dog-in-the-manger of

a woman."

"Oh, come, you know," said Gorst.

"She can't be as bad as all that. Edith's awfully fond of her."

"And that's good enough for you?" said Mrs. Hannay. "Yes. That's good enough for me. I like her," said Gorst stoutly; and Mrs. Hannay hid in her pockethandkerchief a face quivering with mirth.

But Gorst, as he departed, turned on the doorstep and repeated, "Honestly, I like her."

"Well, honestly," said Mr. Hannay, "I don't." And, lost in gloomy forebodings for his friend, he sought consolation in whiskey and soda.

Mrs. Hannay took a seat beside him.

"And what did you think of the dinner?" said she. "It was a dead failure, Pussy."

"You old stupid, I mean the dinner, not the dinnerparty."

Mrs. Hannay rubbed her soft, cherubic face against his sleeve, and as she did so she gently removed the whiskey from his field of vision. She was a woman of exquisite tact.

"Oh, the dinner, my plump Pussy-cat, was a dream— a happy dream.”

CHAPTER XII

"THERE are moments, I admit," said Majendie,

"when Hannay saddens me."

Anne had drawn him into discussing at breakfast-time their host and hostess of the night before.

"Shall you have to see very much of them?" She had made up her mind that she would see very little, or nothing, of the Hannays.

"Well, I haven't, lately, have I?" said he, and she owned that he had not.

"How you ever could" she began, but he stopped her.

"Oh well, we needn't go into that."

It seemed to her that there was something dark and undesirable behind those words, something into which she could well conceive he would not wish to go. It never struck her that he merely wished to put an end to the discussion.

She brooded over it, and became dejected. The great tide of her trouble had long ago ebbed out of her sight. Now it was as if it had turned, somewhere on the edge of the invisible, and was creeping back again. She wished she had never seen or heard of the Hannaysdetestable people.

She betrayed something of this feeling to Edith, who was impatient for an account of the evening. (It was thus that Edith entered vicariously into life.)