y, and then, as luck would have it, he fell ill just in the very
middle of the London season, when invitations to balls and dinner
parties, luncheons and "At Homes," were pouring in from every quarter;
when the lawns at Hurlingham were at their smoothest, and the paddocks at
their smartest.

It was unfortunate, too, that the fashions that season suited the
Honourable Mrs. Billy as they had not suited her for years. In the early
spring, she and Billy had been hard at work planning costumes calculated
to cause a flutter through Mayfair, and the dresses and the bonnets--each
one a work of art--were waiting on their stands to do their killing work.
But the Honourable Mrs. Billy, for the first time in her life, had lost
interest in such things.

Their friends were genuinely sorry, for society was Billy's element, and
in it he was interesting and amusing. But, as Lady Gower said, there was
no earthly need for his wife to constitute herself a prisoner. Her
shutting herself off from the world could do him no good and it would
look odd.

Accordingly the Honourable Mrs. Drayton, to whom oddness was a crime, and
the voice of Lady Gower as the voice of duty, sacrificed her inclinations
on the social shrine, laced the new costumes tight across her aching
heart, and went down into society.

But the Honourable Mrs. Drayton achieved not the success of former
seasons. Her small talk grew so very small, that even Park Lane found it
unsatisfying. Her famous laugh rang mechanically. She smiled at the
wisdom of dukes, and became sad at the funny stories of millionaires.
Society voted her a good wife but bad company, and confined its
attentions to cards of inquiry. And for this relief the Honourable Mrs.
Drayton was grateful, for Billy waned weaker and weaker. In the world of
shadows in which she moved, he was the one real thing. She was of very
little practical use, but it comforted her to think that she was helping
to nurse him.

But Billy himself it troubled.

"I do wish you would go out more," he would say. "It makes me feel that
I'm such a selfish brute, keeping you tied up here in this dismal little
house. Besides," he would add, "people miss you; they will hate me for
keeping you away." For, where his wife was concerned, Billy's knowledge
of the world availed him little. He really thought society craved for
the Honourable Mrs. Drayton, and would not be comforted where she was
not.

"I would rather stop with you,