n at
her, and thrusting his hands in his pockets.

"I don't want it," said Honora; "I don't want it. I told you that I'd
decided I didn't want it when we were there. Oh, Howard, why did you
take it?"

He whistled. He had the maddening air of one who derives amusement from
the tantrums of a spoiled child.

"Well," he remarked, "women are too many for me. If there's any way of
pleasing 'em I haven't yet discovered it. The night before last you had
to have the house. Nothing else would do. It was the greatest find
in New York. For the first time in months you get up for breakfast--a
pretty sure sign you hadn't changed your mind. You drag me to see it,
and when you land me there, because I don't lose my head immediately,
you say you don't want it. Of course I didn't take you seriously--I
thought you'd set your heart on it, so I wired an offer to Shorter
to-day, and he accepted it. And when I hand you this pleasant little
surprise, you go right up in the air."

He had no air of vexation, however, as he delivered this somewhat
reproachful harangue in the picturesque language to which he commonly
resorted. Quite the contrary. He was still smiling, as Santa Claus must
smile when he knows he has another pack up the chimney.

"Why this sudden change of mind?" he demanded. "It can't be because you
want to spend the winter in Quicksands."

She was indeed at a loss what to say. She could not bring herself to ask
him whether he had been influenced by Trixton Brent. If he had, she told
herself, she did not wish to know. He was her husband, after all, and it
would be too humiliating. And then he had taken the house.

"Have you hit on a palace you like better?" he inquired, with a
clumsy attempt at banter. "They tell me the elder Maitlands are going
abroad--perhaps we could get their house on the Park."

"You said you couldn't afford Mrs. Rindge's house," she answered
uneasily, "and I--I believed you."

"I couldn't," he said mysteriously, and paused.

It seemed to her, as she recalled the scene afterwards, that in this
pause he gave the impression of physically swelling. She remembered
staring at him with wide, frightened eyes and parted lips.

"I couldn't," he repeated, with the same strange emphasis and a palpable
attempt at complacency. "But--er--circumstances have changed since
then."

"What do you mean, Howard?" she whispered.

The corners of his mouth twitched in the attempt to repress a smile.

"I mean," he said