ricia was to invite to their first house-party.

"And for heaven's sake, why not? We always have her to everything."

He could not tell her it was because the Charterises were to be among
their guests. So he said: "Oh, well--!"

"Mrs. C.B. Pendomer, then"--Patricia wrote the name with a flourish.
"Oh, you jay-bird, I'm not jealous. Everybody knows you never had any
more morals than a tom-cat on the back fence. It's a lucky thing the boy
didn't take after you, isn't it? He doesn't, not a bit. No, Harry
Pendomer is the puniest black-haired little wretch, whereas your other
son, sir, resembles his mother and is in consequence a ravishingly
beautiful person of superlative charm--"

He was staring at her so oddly that she paused. So Patricia was familiar
with that old scandal which linked his name with Clarice Pendomer's! He
was wondering if Patricia had married him in the belief that she was
marrying a man who, appraised by any standards, had acted infamously.

"I was only thinking you had better ask Judge Allardyce, Patricia. You
see, he is absolutely certain not to come--"

* * * * *

This year the Musgraves had decided not to spend the spring alone
together at Matocton, as they had done the four preceding years.

"It looks so silly," as Patricia pointed out.

And, besides, a house-party is the most economical method,--as she also
pointed out, being born a Stapylton--of paying off your social
obligations, because you can always ask so many people who, you know,
have made other plans, and cannot accept.

* * * * *

"So we will invite Judge Allardyce, of course," said Patricia. "I had
forgotten his court met in June. Oh, and Peter Blagden too. It had
slipped my mind his uncle was dead...."

"I learned this morning Mrs. Haggage was to lecture in Louisville on the
sixteenth. She was reading up in the Library, you see--"

"Rudolph, you are the lodestar of my existence. I will ask her to come
on the fourteenth and spend a week. I never could abide the hag, but she
has such a--There! I've made a big blot right in the middle of
'darling,' and spoiled a perfectly good sheet of paper!... You'd better
mail it at once, though, because the evening-paper may have something in
it about her lecture."

XI

Rudolph--"

"Why--er--yes, dear?"

This was after supper, and Patricia was playing solitaire. Her husband
was reading the paper.

"Agatha told