watched him with the
keenest interest, her chin still in the palm of her hand. He might have
been explaining a new way of serving a tennis ball, for all the emotion
he evoked.

Mr. Briggerland came back to the table, toyed with a piece of toast and
buttered it leisurely.

"Everybody is going to Cannes this year," he said, "but I think I shall
stick to Monte Carlo. There is a quiet about Monte Carlo which is very
restful, especially if one can get a villa on the hill away from the
railway. I told Morden yesterday to take the new car across and meet us
at Boulogne. He says that the new body is exquisite. There is a
micraphonic attachment for telephoning to the driver, the electrical
heating apparatus is splendid and----"

"Meredith was married."

If she had thrown a bomb at him she could not have produced a more
tremendous sensation. He gaped at her, and pushed himself back from the
table.

"Married?" His voice was a squeak.

She nodded.

"It's a lie," he roared. All his suavity dropped away from him, his face
was distorted and puckered with anger and grew a shade darker. "Married,
you lying little beast! He couldn't have been married! It was only a few
minutes after eight, and the parson didn't come till nine. I'll break
your neck if you try to scare me! I've told you about that before...."

He raved on, and she listened unmoved.

"He was married at eight o'clock by a man they brought down from
Oxford, and who stayed the night in the house," she repeated with great
calmness. "There's no sense in lashing yourself into a rage. I've seen
the bride, and spoken to the clergyman."

From the bullying, raging madman, he became a whimpering, pitiable
thing. His chin trembled, the big hands he laid on the tablecloth shook
with a fever.

"What are we going to do?" he wailed. "My God, Jean, what are we going
to do?"

She rose and went to the sideboard, poured out a stiff dose of brandy
from a decanter and brought it across to him without a word. She was
used to these tantrums, and to their inevitable ending. She was neither
hurt, surprised, nor disgusted. This pale, ethereal being was the
dominant partner of the combination. Nerves she did not possess, fears
she did not know. She had acquired the precise sense of a great surgeon
in whom pity was a detached emotion, and one which never intruded itself
into the operating chamber. She was no more phenomenal than they, save
that she did not feel bound by the conventions