end of one's table--as the price of getting her husband, don't you
know?--but--"

Doris's sudden laugh at the Colonel's elbow startled that gentleman so
that he turned round to look at her. But she was absorbed in the menu,
which she had taken up, and he could only suppose that something in it
amused her.

A few days later arrived a letter for Meadows, which he handed to his
wife in silence. There had been no further discussion of Lady Dunstable
between them; only a general sense of friction, warnings of hidden fire
on Doris's side, and resentment on his, quite new in their relation to
each other. Meadows clearly thought that his wife was behaving very
badly. Lady Dunstable's efforts on his behalf had already done him
substantial service; she had introduced him to all kinds of people
likely to help him, intellectually and financially; and to help him was
to help Doris. Why would she be such a little fool? So unlike her,
too!--sensible, level-headed creature that she generally was. But he was
afraid of losing his own temper, if he argued with her. And indeed his
lazy easy-goingness loathed argument of this domestic sort, loathed
scenes, loathed doing anything disagreeable that could be put off.

But here was Lady Dunstable's letter:

Dear Mr. Arthur,--Will your wife forgive me if I ask you to come to
a tiny _men's_ dinner-party next Friday at 8.15--to meet the
President of the Duma, and another Russian, an intimate friend of
Tolstoy's? All males, but myself! So I hope Mrs. Meadows will let
you come.

Yours sincerely,
RACHEL DUNSTABLE.

"Of course, I won't go if you don't like it, Doris," said Meadows with
the smile of magnanimity.

"I thought you were angry with me--once--for even suggesting that you
might!" Doris's tone was light, but not pleasing to a husband's ears.
She was busy at the moment in packing up the American proofs of the
Disraeli lecture, which at last with infinite difficulty she had
persuaded Meadows to correct and return.

"Well--but of course--this is exceptional!" said Meadows, pacing up and
down irresolutely.

"Everything's exceptional--in that quarter," said Doris, in the same
tone. "Oh, go, of course!--it would be a thousand pities not to go."

Meadows at once took her at her word. That was the first of a series of
"male" dinners, to which, however, it seemed to Doris, if one might
judge from Arthu