I
LETHBURY, surveying his wife across the dinner table, found his
transient conjugal glance arrested by an indefinable change in her
appearance.
"How smart you look! Is that a new gown?" he asked.
Her answering look seemed to deprecate his charging her with the
extravagance of wasting a new gown on him, and he now perceived that
the change lay deeper than any accident of dress. At the same time, he
noticed that she betrayed her consciousness of it by a delicate, almost
frightened blush. It was one of the compensations of Mrs. Lethbury's
protracted childishness that she still blushed as prettily as at
eighteen. Her body had been privileged not to outstrip her mind, and
the two, as it seemed to Lethbury, were destined to travel together
through an eternity of girlishness.
"I don't know what you mean," she said.
Since she never did, he always wondered at her bringing this out as a
fresh grievance against him; but his wonder was unresentful, and he
said good-humoredly: "You sparkle so that I thought you had on your
diamonds."
She sighed and blushed again.
"It must be," he continued, "that you've been to a dressmaker's
opening. You're absolutely brimming with illicit enjoyment."
She stared again, this time at the adjective. His adjectives always
embarrassed her: their unintelligibleness savored of impropriety.
"In short," he summed up, "you've been doing something that you're
thoroughly ashamed of."
To his surprise she retorted: "I don't see why I should be ashamed of
it!"
Lethbury leaned back with a smile of enjoyment. When there was nothing
better going he always liked to listen to her explanations.
"Well--?" he said.
She was becoming breathless and ejaculatory. "Of course you'll
laugh--you laugh at everything!"
"That rather blunts the point of my derision, doesn't it?" he
interjected; but she rushed on without noticing:
"It's so easy to laugh at things."
"Ah," murmured Lethbury with relish, "that's Aunt Sophronia's, isn't
it?"
Most of his wife's opinions were heirlooms, and he took a quaint
pleasure in tracing their descent. She was proud of their age, and saw
no reason for discarding them while they were still serviceable. Some,
of course, were so fine that she kept them for state occasions, like
her great-grandmother's Crown Derby; but from the lady known as Aunt
Sophronia she had inherited a stout set of every-day prejudices that
were practically as good as new; whereas her husband's, as she noticed,
were always having to be replaced. In the early days she had fancied
there might be a certain satisfaction in taxing him with the fact; but
she had long since been silenced by the reply: "My dear, I'm not a rich
man, but I never use an opinion twice if I can help it."
She was reduced, therefore, to dwelling on his moral deficiencies; and
one of the most obvious of these was his refusal to take things
seriously. On this occasion, however, some ulterior purpose kept her
from taking up his taunt.
"I'm not in the least ashamed!" she repeated, with the air of shaking a
banner to the wind; but the domestic atmosphere being calm, the banner
drooped unheroically.
"That," said Lethbury judicially, "encourages me to infer that you
ought to be, and that, consequently, you've been giving yourself the
unusual pleasure of doing something I shouldn't approve of."
She met this with an almost solemn directness. "No," she said. "You
won't approve of it. I've allowed for that."
"Ah," he exclaimed, setting down his liqueur-glass. "You've worked out
the whole problem, eh?"
"I believe so."
"That's uncommonly interesting. And what is it?"