areer, had done. It saved him.
Without the check that his clever little wife almost imperceptibly
imposed upon him, "Rip" Wriothesley would probably, ere this, have
joined the "broken brigade," and vanished from society's ken. As it
was, the pretty little house in Hans Place throve merrily; and though
people constantly wondered how the Wriothesleys got on, yet the
unmistakable fact remained, that season after season they were to be
seen everywhere and ruffling it with the best.

The Wriothesleys had advantages for which those who marvelled as to how
they managed failed to make due allowance. They were both of good
family--in fact, their escutcheons were better to investigate than
their banker's account. Both popular in their own way, they were
always in request to make up a party for Hurlingham dinners, the Ascot
week, or other similar diversion. They did not affect to entertain;
but the half-dozen little dinners--strictly limited to eight
persons--that they gave in that tiny dining-room in the course of the
season were spoken of with enthusiasm by the privileged few who had
been bidden. An invitation to Mrs. Wriothesley's occasional little
suppers after the play was by no means to be neglected; the two or
three _plats_ were always of the best, and the "Rip" took care that
Giessler's "Brut" should be unimpeachable. They had both a weakness
for race-meetings; but Wriothesley's plunging days were over, and his
modest ventures were staked with considerably more discretion than in
the times when he bet heavily. The lady was a little bit of a
coquette, no doubt; but the most unscrupulous of scandalmongers had
never ventured to breathe a word of reproach against Mrs. Wriothesley.
A flirting, husband-hunting little minx, she had fallen honestly in
love with this big, _blond_, good-humoured Life Guardsman; and,
incredible as it might seem to the world she lived in, remained so
still. They understood each other marvellously well, those two. The
"Rip" regarded his wife as the cleverest woman alive; and, though she
most undoubtedly looked upon him in a very different light, nobody more
thoroughly appreciated the honest worth of his character than she did.
As she once said, to one of her female intimates, of her husband, "He
has one great virtue: he is always 'straight,' my dear. The 'Rip'
couldn't tell me a lie if he tried."

Mrs. Wriothesley is sitting in her pretty little drawing-room listening
to Sylla Chipchase's