the
Barbara to whom her husband had been up to this accustomed. He did not
blame her for the change of front under the circumstances, but he could
hardly fail to regret it, and it puzzled him a great deal to know how
she did it.

He was dreadfully sorry about it secretly, and would have given very
much more than the whole thing was worth to let his father and mother
see his wife as she really is--the true Barbara.

Lady Monkton had been stiff, too; unpardonably so--as it was certainly
her place to make amends--to soften and smooth down the preliminary
embarrassment. But then she had never been framed for suavity of any
sort; and an old aunt of Monkton's, a sister of hers, had been present
during the interview, and had helped considerably to keep up the
frigidity of the atmosphere.

She was not a bad old woman at heart, this aunt. She had indeed from
time to time given up all her own small patrimony to help her sister to
get the eldest son out of his many disreputable difficulties. She had
done this, partly for the sake of the good old family names on both
sides, and partly because the younger George Monkton was very dear to
her.

From his early boyhood the scapegrace of the family had been her
admiration, and still remained so, in imagination. For years she had not
seen him, and perhaps this (that she considered a grievance) was a
kindness vouchsafed to her by Providence. Had she seen the pretty boy of
twenty years ago as he now is she would not have recognized him. The
change from the merry, blue-eyed, daring lad of the past to the bloated,
blear-eyed, reckless-looking man of to-day would have been a shock too
cruel for her to bear. But this she was not allowed to realize, and so
remained true to her belief in him, as she remembered him.

In spite of her many good qualities, she was, nevertheless, a dreadful
woman; the more dreadful to the ordinary visitor because of the false
front she wore, and the flashing purchased teeth that shone in her upper
jaw. She lived entirely with Sir George and Lady Monkton, having indeed
given them every penny that would have enabled her to live elsewhere.
Perhaps of all the many spites they owed their elder son, the fact that
his iniquities had inflicted upon them his maternal aunt for the rest of
her natural days, was the one that rankled keenest.

She disliked Frederic, not only intensely, but with an openness that had
its disadvantages--not for any greater reason than that he