ainly upon
Honor's shoulders. The girl's readiness to accept Evelyn's burden, as
a matter of course, could not fail to rouse Desmond's admiration: and
these three months of friction and stress, of working bravely together
for one end, went far to strengthen the bond of their friendship.

Evelyn contented herself with a thinly veiled air of martyrdom, and
with raising objections whenever opportunity offered. Only after
Denvil's first dinner did she venture a direct attack. For on this
occasion economy was not. Wine and cigars appeared with the dessert;
and the two men sat an inordinately long while over both. But the
inner significance of her husband's acts being a sealed book to Evelyn
Desmond, she spent the evening in a state of suppressed irritation,
which, on the Boy's departure, overflowed in petulant reproof.

"Why did you have everything different to-night just because of Mr
Denvil?" she demanded in a note of challenge.

"Because I preferred it so."

Desmond's tone was polite, but final. He sat down and opened a book in
self-defence. But Evelyn was not to be baulked by a policy of masterly
inactivity. She remained standing before him.

"Is it going to be like that every time he comes?"

"Yes."

"Theo--it's perfectly ridiculous the way you put yourself out for that
boy!" she protested with unusual heat, kindled by a hidden spark of
jealousy. "It's bad enough to have you giving up everything, and
making Honor and me thoroughly uncomfortable, without this sort of
nonsense on the top of it all."

Honor glanced up in quick remonstrance; but Desmond caught the look in
her eyes, and it was enough. "Haven't you the sense to see that just
because he is so fond of you he _ought_ to be allowed to know how much
trouble he has given you. It's the only way to make him more careful,
now he's back again; and if you _will_ go on in this way, I shall end
in speaking to him myself."

She had overshot the mark.

Desmond shut the book with a snap; flung it on the table, and sprang
up with such anger in his eyes that his wife shrank back
instinctively. Her movement, slight as it was, checked the impetuous
speech upon his lips.

"You will do nothing of the sort," he said in a restrained voice. "It
is a matter entirely between him and me; and that's an end of the
subject, once for all."

Evelyn, startled into silence, stood motionless till the study door
closed behind her husband; then, with a sigh of exasperation, hurrie