n such an occasion.

"If you'd rung me up, dear," said Osborn to his wife, "I should have
been charmed to take you anywhere you liked."

"And broken your appointment with me!" Roselle supplied suddenly, and
the gage was down between the two women.

Roselle Dates eyed the wife warily and feared her. And the measure of
her hate matched that of her fear. Leaning forward, her white chin on
her white hands, she cooed across the table:

"But I'd have forgiven him, Mrs. Kerr, if it was only for the sake of
the jolly time he gave me yesterday."

"At Brighton?" Marie smiled across at Osborn.

He nodded. "I told you I was going."

"Do you like the car?" Marie asked Roselle sweetly.

"She's a duck," said the other woman, her eyes snapping, "but of
course yesterday wasn't my first acquaintance with her. I know her
every trick well. When we were in New York people were so struck by
her neatness in traffic."

Osborn started involuntarily, exclaiming as involuntarily:

"Roselle!"

"What?" she asked, turning a stare upon him.

He fidgeted uncomfortably. "Don't be an ass," he said. "Marie--"

"What, dear?" asked his wife.

Again he fidgeted. "When Miss Dates mentions being in New York--" he
began.

"And Chicago and all through Canada from Montreal to the West," said
Roselle, continuing upon the breakneck course she seemed to have
chosen in a moment.

"She means to tell you," said Osborn doggedly, "that she was doing a
concert tour which coincided almost, though not quite, with my
movements, and that having met her on board, we--we did some motoring
together."

Breathless, he awaited the working of the most amazing situation in
which he had ever found himself, and he had not long to wait. He did
not know how much his wife knew nor what might be her summing up; he
did not know that during the night Roselle had slept upon the problem
of himself and had concluded he was too good to lose; he did not
understand in the least what motives were actuating these two women;
the flaming and insolent resentment of Roselle at the other's mere
presence; the calm and pretty pose of his wife. He gazed at each in
embarrassed bewilderment, and Roselle, her chin still on her palms,
and her eyes bright and stony, commented on his explanation. She
drawled:

"Osborn, you're a liar. Your wife knows as well as I do that she could
divorce you to-morrow."

"But Miss Dates would be a fool, which I am sure she is not," said the
wife's pret