contrived and wholly successful.
Netta thought at first that she was "made up," so dazzling was the
white and pink, and then doubted. The beauty of the face reminded one,
perhaps, of the beauty of a boy--of some clear-eyed, long-chinned
athlete--masterfully simple--a careless conqueror.

How well she and Edmund seemed to know each other! That was the strange,
strange thing in Netta's eyes. Presently she sat altogether silent while
they talked. Melrose still walking up and down--casting quick glances
at his guest. Lady Tatham gave what seemed to be family news--how "John"
had been sent to Teheran--and "George" was to be military secretary in
Dublin--and "Barbara" to the astonishment of everybody had consented to
be made a Woman of the Bedchamber--"poor Queen!"--how Reginald Pratt had
been handsomely turned out of the Middleswick seat, and was probably
going to "rat" to an Opposition that promised more than the
Government--that Cecilia's eldest girl--"a pretty little minx"--had been
already presented, and was likely to prove as skilful a campaigner for a
husband as her mother before her--that "Gerald" had lost heavily at
Newmarket, and was now a financial nuisance, borrowing from everybody in
the family--and so on, and so on.

Melrose received these various items of information half scornfully, half
greedily; it might have been guessed that his interest in the teller was
a good deal keener than his interest in the things told. The conversation
revealed to Netta phases in her husband's existence wholly unknown to
her. So Edmund had been in Rome--for two or three years--in the Embassy!
That she had never known. He seemed also to have been an English member
of Parliament for a time. In any case he had lived, apparently for years,
like other men of his kind--shooting, racing, visiting, travelling,
fighting, elections. She could not fit the facts to which both alluded
with her own recollections of the misanthrope who had first made
acquaintance with her and her family in Florence three years before this
date; and her bewilderment grew.

As for the others, they had soon, it seemed, completely forgotten the
thin sallow-faced wife, who sat with her back to the window, restlessly
twisting her rings.

Presently Melrose stopped abruptly--in front of Lady Tatham.

"Where is Edith?" He bent forward peremptorily, his hand on the table,
his eyes on the lady's face.

"At the Cape with her husband."

"Has she found him out yet?"