“Does she?”

“Well, you said she was a matchmaker, Mary. There was no disloyalty in saying so, for it is known by every one who knows Lady Mainwaring.”

“And, therefore, my friends are not, and need not be, perfect.”

During this little conversation, Odd sat with the unhappy, helpless look men wear when their women-kind are engaged in such contests.

“I am awfully hungry. Isn’t it almost lunch-time?” he said, as they paused.

Mrs. Odd looked at her watch. “It only wants five minutes.”

Odd walked to the window and looked out at the sweep of lawn, with its lime-trees and copper beeches. The flower-beds were in all their glory.

“How well the mignonette is getting on, Mary,” he said, looking down at the fragrant greenness that came to the window. Alicia got up and joined her husband, putting her arm through his.

“Let us take a turn in the garden, Peter,” she smiled at him; and although he understood, with the fatal clearness that one year of life with Alicia had given him, that the walk was only proposed as a slight to Mary, he felt the old pleasure in her beauty—a rather sickly, pallid pleasure—and an inner qualm was dispersed by the realization that he and Mary understood one another so well that there need be no fear of hurting her.

After one year of married life, he and Mary knew the nearness of the sympathy that allows itself no words.

There seemed to Odd a perverse pathos in Alicia’s lonely complacency—a pathos emphasized by her indifferent unconsciousness.

“Mary is so disagreeable to-day,” said Alicia, as they walked slowly across the lawn. “She has such a strong sense of her own worth and of other people’s worthlessness.”

Odd made no reply. He never said a harsh word to his wife. He had chosen to marry her. The man who would wreak his own disillusion on the woman he had made his wife must, thought Odd, be a sorry wretch. He met the revealment of Alicia’s shallow selfishness with humorous gentleness. She had been shallow and selfish when he had married her, and he had not found it out—had not cared to find it out. He contemplated these characteristics now with philosophic, even scientific charity. She was born so.

“It will be dull enough here, at all events,” Alicia went on, pressing her slim patent-leather shoe into the turf with lazy emphasis as she walked, for Alicia was not bad-tempered, and took things easily; “but if Mary is going to be disagreeable—“

“You know, Alicia, that Mary has always lived here. It is in a truer sense her home than mine, but she would go directly if either you or she found it disagreeable. Had you not assented so cordially she would never have stayed.”

“Don’t imply extravagant things, Peter. Who thinks of her going?”

“She would—if you made it disagreeable.”

“I? I do nothing. Surely Mary won’t want to go because she scolds me.”

“Come, Ally, surely you don’t get scolded—more than is good for you.” Odd smiled down at her. Her burnished head was on a level with his eyes. “Like everybody else, you are not perfection, and, as Mary is somewhat of a disciplinarian, you ought to take her lectures in a humble spirit, and be thankful. I do. Mary is so much nearer perfection than I am.”

“I am afraid I shall be bored here, Peter.” Alicia left the subject of Mary for a still more intimate grievance.

“The art of not being bored requires patience, not to say genius. It can be learned though. And there are worse things than being bored.”

“I think I could bear anything better.”

“What would you like, Ally?” Odd’s voice held a certain hopefulness. “I’ll do anything I can, you know. I believe in a woman’s individuality and all that. Does your life down here crush your individuality, Alicia?”

Again Odd smiled down at her, conscious of an inward bitterness.

“Joke away, Peter. You know how much I care for all that woman business—rights and movements and individualities and all that; a silly claiming of more duties that do no good when they’re done. I am an absolutely banal person, Peter; my mind to me isn’t a kingdom. I like outside things. I like gayety, change, diversion. I don’t like days one after the other—like sheep—and I don’t like sheep!”

They had passed through the shrubbery, and before them were meadows dotted with the harmless animals that had suggested Mrs. Odd’s simile.

“Well, we won’t look at the sheep. I own that they savor strongly of bucolic immutability. You’ve had plenty of London for the past year, Ally, and Nice and Monte Carlo. The sheep are really the change.”

“You had better go in for a seat in Parliament, Peter.”

“Longings for a political salon, Ally? I have hardly time for my scribbling and landlording as it is.”

“A salon! Nothing would bore me so much as being clever and keeping it up. No, I like seeing people and being seen, and dancing and all that. I am absolutely banal, as I tell you.”

“Well, you shall have London next year. We’ll go up for the season.”

“You took me for what I was, Peter,” Mrs. Odd remarked as they retraced their steps towards the house. “I have never pretended, have I? You knew that I was a society beauty and that only. I am a very shallow person, I suppose, Peter; I certainly can’t pretend to have depths—even to give Mary satisfaction. It would be too uncomfortable. Why did you fall in love with me, Peter? It wasn’t en caractère a bit, you know.”

“Oh yes, it was, Ally. I fell in love with you because you were beautiful. Why did you fall in love with me?”

The mockery with which Alicia’s smile was tinged deepened into a good-humored laugh at her own expense.

“Well, Peter, I don’t think any one before made me feel that they thought me so beautiful. I am vain, you know. Your enthusiasm was awfully flattering. I am very sorry you idealized me, Peter. I am sure you idealized me. Shall we go in? Lunch must be ready, and you must be hungrier than ever.”

CHAPTER III

AT four that afternoon Odd, his wife, and Mary started for the Archinards’ house. Mary had offered to join her brother; the prospect of the walk together was very pleasant. She could not object when Alicia, at the last moment, announced her intention of going too.

“I have never been to see her. I should like the walk, and Mary will approve of the fulfilment of my duty towards my neighbor.”

Mary’s prospects were decidedly nipped in the bud, as Alicia perhaps intended that they should be; but Alicia’s avowed motive was so praiseworthy that Mary allowed herself only an inner discontent, and, what with her good-humored demeanor, Odd’s placid chat of crops and tenantry, and Alicia’s acquiescent beauty, the trio seemed to enjoy the mile of beechwood and country road and the short sweep of prettily wooded drive that led to Allersley Priory, a square stone house covered with vines of magnolia and wisteria, and incorporating in its walls, according to tradition, portions of the old Priory which once occupied the site. From the back of the house sloped a wide expanse of lawn and shrubberies, and past it ran the river that half a mile further on flowed out of Captain Archinard’s little property into Odd’s. The drawing-room was on the ground-floor, and its windows opened on this view.

Mrs. Archinard and the Captain were talking to young Lord Allan Hope, eldest son of Lord Mainwaring. Mrs. Archinard’s invalidism was evidently not altogether fictitious. She had a look of at once extreme fragility and fading beauty. One knew at the first glance that she was a woman to have cushions behind her and her back to the light. There was no character in