ndered how his wife managed to fill the days which must be
so terribly empty. He himself was working harder than usual, since
beside the review he was contributing articles, by invitation, to
several well-known journals; and he often worked till late into the
night; but Toni had no work, no hobbies, nothing with which to fill the
long, sunny hours.

She did not complain. Indeed, she seemed happy enough in her idleness;
and by this time she knew a good many people in the neighbourhood,
though she had not made many friends.

At the Vicarage she was not looked upon with much favour, owing to an
unfortunate conversation with the Vicar's wife, when in response to
various leading questions Toni had shown a lamentable ignorance of the
great gulf which yawns between Church and Chapel--a quite conceivable
ignorance on the part of the London tradesman's niece, who had attended
Chapel with her aunt and uncle on Sunday evenings as cheerfully as she
joined in the more attractive service in the Church which the genteel
Fanny generally patronized on Sunday mornings.

When, further, Toni innocently admitted that, although baptized into the
Church of England, she had usually attended the Roman Catholic Church
and Sunday School during her Italian childhood, the wife of the Vicar
was appalled; and ever afterwards she spoke of Mrs. Rose as unsound in
her views, a condemnation which in the somewhat old-fashioned
neighbourhood carried full weight.

Lady Martin also strongly disapproved of the young mistress of
Greenriver, though probably only she herself and her spinster daughter
could have adduced any reason for their dislike of Toni and all her
works.

The story of the shrimps had long since amused Lady Martin's large
circle of acquaintances; and although no one had ventured to breathe a
word before either Owen Rose or his wife, it was hardly surprising that
Toni came to be considered rather amusingly unsophisticated; so that the
slightest _gaucherie_ into which the unconscious Toni was betrayed
during those first weeks of her introduction into the society of the
district was eagerly noted and joyfully magnified in a dozen
drawing-rooms.

There was the laughable story of the Roses' late arrival at an important
dinner-party, and Mrs. Rose's ingenuous explanation to her rather
irascible host that she had torn her frock at the last moment while
playing with her dog, and had been obliged to change it for another--and
this to an elderly