the drapery in a portrait by
Velasquez. A border of fur, too, is an artistic introduction in a
woman's dress--you see it often in Velasquez. Heavy old laces are, of
course, always admirable. And for colour I like the warmer hues
best--wine-dark purples or deep glowing reds; rich ruddy browns, with a
knot of amber now and then for relief."

"How beautifully you talk," cried Mrs. Winstanley, delighted. "I only
wish Theodore could hear you. It would give her new ideas; for, after
all, the best dressmakers are _bornees_. It is too early in the year
for velvet. I shall put on my dark green brocade with the old Flanders
lace. I am so glad you like lace. It is my chief weakness. Even dear
Edward, who was so generous, thought me a little extravagant in the
matter of lace. But when one once begins to collect, the study is so
interesting. One is led on."

"Good Heavens! is my wife a collector?" thought Captain Winstanley,
horrified. "That must be put a stop to, or she will ruin me."

And then he wont off to his dressing-room rather wearily, to put on
full-dress for a home dinner, a sacrifice to his new state of existence
which he found very irksome. He would have liked to dine in a
shooting-jacket, and smoke all the evening. But his smoking now,
instead of pervading the whole house, as it had done in his snug
bachelor quarters, was an indulgence to be taken out of doors, or in a
room appointed for the purpose. He was not even to smoke in the fine
old hall, for it was one of the family sitting-rooms, and Mrs.
Winstanley could not endure smoke.

"I am not at all fanciful or capricious," she told her husband early in
the honeymoon, "but smoking is one of my horrors. I hope, dear Conrad,
it is not too much to ask you never to smoke in any room I use."

Captain Winstanley pledged himself to respect this and every other wish
of his wife's. It was his policy to be subservient in small matters, in
order to be master in essentials. But that daily dressing for dinner
was something of a bore; and the dinners themselves--_tete-a-tete_
dinners, in which he had to take as much trouble to be amusing as at a
dinner-party, had been apt to hang heavily upon him. He had even
proposed dining at the _table-d'hote_, while they were on their Scotch
travels, but this idea Mrs. Winstanley rejected with horror.

"I have never dined at a _table-d'hote_ in my life, Conrad," she
exclaimed, "and I certainly should not begin during my wedding tour."