tive lead the
happiest lives. Toni, not being given to wasting her time in reflection
or self-analysis, remained happily unconscious of the fact that her life
during that splendid summer was a very idle one. Like a good many other
girls, she considered that a strenuous game on the tennis-court or a
stiff pull up the river entitled her to as much subsequent leisure as
she desired; and she enjoyed the slight fatigue consequent on these
exertions with a virtuous sense of having really done some work which
entitled her to a holiday.

She did not see very much of her husband; and sometimes she felt, with a
slight pang of remorse, that before their marriage she had really taken
more interest in his work than she found time to do nowadays. Not that
he ever seemed to expect anything from her in that way. Once or twice,
in the earlier days of their married life, he had been led into
discussing various features of the review with her, and she had really
tried hard to listen intelligently, and understand what he was talking
about; but somehow he seemed to guess that the subjects did not interest
her; and for the last few weeks he had confined his conversations with
her to the little trivial happenings of every day.

He didn't mind, she supposed. He must get plenty of the old _Bridge_ at
the office; and anyway it was far more of a change for him, when he came
home, to talk of other things, even though they were in one sense less
important.

She herself was perfectly happy; and had she been asked, she would
certainly have said that Owen was in a state of equal bliss. Moreover,
seeing that he had chosen her out of a world of women to be his wife,
she never stopped to ask herself whether or no she came up to his
standard of wifely perfection.

And considering her peculiarly blind and unquestioning attitude of mind
on the subject of her relation to her husband, the awakening which
presently came was doubly painful.

The occasion, as has been stated, was that of the Vicarage Bazaar, an
annual function held in the Vicarage gardens in the middle of August;
and since Mrs. Madgwick, the Vicar's wife, had from motives of parochial
diplomacy established some sort of intimacy with the young mistress of
Greenriver, she had pressed Toni into her service as the great day came
round.

With Molly and Cynthia Peach, Toni was to assist at the flower-stall,
which was always, so the Tobies assured her, certain of patronage; and
by ten o'clock o