band. He'll do as well as the next man. His duties are pretty
well--defined."

Again she was silent. But after a moment dropped back in her chair and
laughed uneasily.

"You're preposterous," she said; "I can't think why I let you talk to me
in this way."

CHAPTER VIII. OF MENTAL PROCESSES--FEMININE AND INSOLUBLE

Honora may be pardoned for finally ascribing to Mr. Brent's somewhat
sardonic sense of humour his remarks concerning her husband's elevation
to a conspicuous position in the world of finance. Taken in any other
sense than a joke, they were both insulting and degrading, and made her
face burn when she thought of them. After he had gone--or rather after
she had dismissed him--she took a book upstairs to wait for Howard, but
she could not read. At times she wished she had rebuked Trixton Brent
more forcibly, although he was not an easy person to rebuke; and again
she reflected that, had she taken the matter too seriously, she would
have laid herself open to his ridicule. The lion was often unwittingly
rough, and perhaps that was part of his fascination.

If Howard had come home before midnight it is possible that she might
have tried to sound him as to his relations with Trixton Brent. That
gentleman, she remembered, had the reputation of being a peculiarly
hardheaded business man, and it was of course absurd that he should
offer her husband a position merely to please her. And her imagination
failed her when she tried to think of Howard as the president of a trust
company. She was unable to picture him in a great executive office:

This train of thought led her to the unaccustomed task of analyzing his
character. For the first time since her marriage comparisons crept
into her mind, and she awoke to the fact that he was not a masterful
man--even among men. For all his self-confidence-self-assurance,
perhaps, would be the better word--he was in reality a follower, not
a leader; a gleaner. He did not lack ideas. She tried to arrest the
process in her brain when she got as far as asking herself whether it
might not be that he lacked ideals. Since in business matters he never
had taken her into his confidence, and since she would not at any rate
have understood such things, she had no proof of such a failing. But one
or two vague remarks of Trixton Brent's which she recalled, and Howard's
own request that she should be friendly with Brent, reenforced her
instinct on this point.

When she heard her husb