His wife gave a heart-breaking sigh.

"I would sacrifice anything for your sake, Conrad," she said, "but I
shall be a perfect horror, and you will hate me."

"I fell in love with you, my dear, not with your gown."

"But you fell in love with me in my gown, dear; and you don't know how
different your feelings might have been if you had seen me in a gown
cut by a country dressmaker."

CHAPTER III.

"With weary Days thou shalt be clothed and fed."

Captain Winstanley never again alluded to the dressmaker's bill. He was
too wise a man to reopen old wounds or to dwell upon small vexations.
He had invested every penny that he could spare, leaving the smallest
balance at his banker's compatible with respectability. He had to sell
some railway shares in order to pay Madame Theodore. Happily the shares
had gone up since his purchase of them, and he lost nothing by the
transaction; but it galled him sorely to part with the money. It was as
if an edifice that he had been toilfully raising, stone by stone, had
begun to crumble under his hands. He knew not when or whence the next
call might come. The time in which he had to save money was so short.
Only six years, and the heiress would claim her estate, and Mrs.
Winstanley would be left with the empty shell of her present
position--the privilege of occupying a fine old Tudor mansion, with
enormous stables, and fifteen acres of garden and shrubberies, and an
annuity that would barely suffice to maintain existence in a third-rate
London square.

Mrs. Winstanley was slow to recover from the shock of her husband's
strong language about Theodore's bill. She was sensitive about all
things that touched her own personality, and she was peculiarly
sensitive about the difference between her husband's age and her own.
She had married a man who was her junior; but she had married him with
the conviction that, in his eyes at least, she had all the bloom and
beauty of youth, and that he admired and loved her above all other
women. That chance allusion to her wrinkles had pierced her heart. She
was deeply afflicted by the idea that her husband had perceived the
signs of advancing years in her face. And now she fell to perusing her
looking-glass more critically than she had ever done before. She saw
herself in the searching north light; and the north light was more
cruel and more candid than Captain Winstanley. There were lines on her
forehead--unmistakable, ineffaceable lines. She co