ou had better go, my dear!' said her husband sardonically. 'I cannot
imagine anything more piquant than an atheistic slum on Easter Eve.'

'Nor can I!' she replied, her combativeness rousing at once. 'Much
obliged to you, Hugh. I will borrow my housekeeper's dress, and be ready
to leave here at half-past seven.'

'Nothing more was said of Rose, but Flaxman knew that she would be
asked, and let it alone.

'Will his wife be there?' asked Lady Charlotte.

'Who? Elsmere's? My dear aunt, when you happen to be the orthodox
wife of a rising heretic, your husband's opinions are not exactly the
spectacular performance they are to you and me. I should think it most
unlikely.'

'Oh, she persecutes him does she?'

'She wouldn't be a woman if she didn't!' observed Mr. Wynnstay, _sotto
voce_. The small dark man was lost in a great arm-chair, his delicate
painter's hands playing with the fur of a huge Persian cat. Lady
Charlotte threw him an eagle glance, and he subsided,--for the moment.

Flaxman, however, was perfectly right. There had been a breeze. It
had been just announced to the master of the house by his spouse that
certain Socialist celebrities--who might any day be expected to make
acquaintance with the police--were coming to dine at his table, to
finger his spoons, and mix their diatribes with his champagne, on the
following Tuesday. Overt rebellion had never served him yet, and he knew
perfectly well that when it came to the point he should smile more or
less affably upon these gentry, as he had smiled upon others of the same
sort before. But it had not yet come to the point and his intermediate
state was explosive in the extreme.

Mr. Flaxman dexterously continued the subject of the Elsmeres. Dropping
his bantering tone, he delivered himself of a very delicate, critical
analysis of Catherine Elsmere's temperament and position, as in the
course of several months his intimacy with her husband had revealed them
to him. He did it well, with acuteness and philosophical relish. The
situation presented itself to him as an extremely refined and yet tragic
phase of the religious difficulty, and it gave him intellectual pleasure
to draw it out in words.

Lady Charlotte sat listening, enjoying her nephew's crisp phrases, but
also gradually gaining a perception of the human reality behind this
word-play of Hugh's. That 'good heart' of hers was touched; the large
imperious face began to frown.

'Dear me!' she said, with a