worrying about it now."

"Isn't it possible," said the little year-old bride, "that Mr. Majendie
may have told her himself?"

For Dr. Gardner had told her everything the day before he married her,
confessing to the light loves of his youth, the young lady in the Free
Library and all. She looked round with eyes widened by their angelic
candour. Even more beautiful than Mrs. Gardner's intellect were Mrs.
Gardner's eyes, and the love of them that brought the doctor's home from
their wanderings in philosophic dream. Nobody but Dr. Gardner knew that
Mrs. Gardner's intellect had cause to be jealous of her eyes.

"There's one thing," said Mrs. Eliott, suddenly enlightened. "Our not
having said anything at the time makes it easier for us to receive him
now."

"Aren't we all talking," said Mrs. Gardner, "rather as if Anne had
married a monster? After all, have we ever heard anything against
him--except Lady Cayley?"

"Oh no, never a word, have we, Johnson dear?"

"Never. He's not half a bad fellow, Majendie."

Dr. Gardner rose to go.

"Oh, please--don't go before they come."

Mrs. Gardner hesitated, but the doctor, vague in his approaches,
displayed a certain energy in his departure.

They passed Mrs. Walter Majendie on the stairs.

She had come alone. That, Mrs. Eliott felt, was a bad beginning. She
could see that it struck even Johnson's obtuseness as unfavourable, for
he presently effaced himself.

"Fanny," said Anne, holding her friend's evasive eye with the
determination of her query, "tell me, who are the Ransomes?"

"The Ransomes? Have they called?"

"Yes, but I was out. I didn't see them."

"Oh, my dear," said Mrs. Eliott, in a tone which implied that when Anne
_did_ see them----

"Are they very dreadful?"

"Well--they're not your sort."

Anne meditated. "Not--my--sort. And the Lawson Hannays, what sort are
they?"

"Well, we don't know them. But there are a great many people in Scale one
doesn't know."

"Are they socially impossible, or what?"

"Oh--socially, they would be considered--in Scale--all right. But he is,
or was, mixed up with some very queer people."

Anne's cold face intimated that the adjective suggested nothing to her.
Mrs. Eliott was compelled to be explicit. The word queer was applied in
Scale to persons of dubious honesty in business; whereas it was not so
much in business as in pleasure that Mr. Lawson Hannay had been queer.

"Mr. Hannay may be very steady now, but I beli