oftened the slight
hardness of her virginal features; or else it was simply the inner glow
of happiness, shining through like a light under ice.

"Wear, dearest? I thought a trunkful of things had come from Paris
last week."

"Yes, of course. I meant to say that I shan't know WHICH to wear."
She pouted a little. "I've never dined out in London; and I don't want
to be ridiculous."

He tried to enter into her perplexity. "But don't Englishwomen dress
just like everybody else in the evening?"

"Newland! How can you ask such funny questions? When they go to the
theatre in old ball-dresses and bare heads."

"Well, perhaps they wear new ball-dresses at home; but at any rate Mrs.
Carfry and Miss Harle won't. They'll wear caps like my mother's--and
shawls; very soft shawls."

"Yes; but how will the other women be dressed?"

"Not as well as you, dear," he rejoined, wondering what had suddenly
developed in her Janey's morbid interest in clothes.

She pushed back her chair with a sigh. "That's dear of you, Newland;
but it doesn't help me much."

He had an inspiration. "Why not wear your wedding-dress? That can't
be wrong, can it?"

"Oh, dearest! If I only had it here! But it's gone to Paris to be
made over for next winter, and Worth hasn't sent it back."

"Oh, well--" said Archer, getting up. "Look here--the fog's lifting.
If we made a dash for the National Gallery we might manage to catch a
glimpse of the pictures."

The Newland Archers were on their way home, after a three months'
wedding-tour which May, in writing to her girl friends, vaguely
summarised as "blissful."

They had not gone to the Italian Lakes: on reflection, Archer had not
been able to picture his wife in that particular setting. Her own
inclination (after a month with the Paris dressmakers) was for
mountaineering in July and swimming in August. This plan they
punctually fulfilled, spending July at Interlaken and Grindelwald, and
August at a little place called Etretat, on the Normandy coast, which
some one had recommended as quaint and quiet. Once or twice, in the
mountains, Archer had pointed southward and said: "There's Italy"; and
May, her feet in a gentian-bed, had smiled cheerfully, and replied:
"It would be lovely to go there next winter, if only you didn't have to
be in New York."

But in reality travelling interested her even less than he had
expected. She regarded it (once her clothes were ordered) as merely an
enl