was one of that innumerable class of
charming persons who are perfectly delicious and perfectly sweet so
long as they have precisely their own way--and no longer.

Vera perceived only two things. She perceived the hat--although her
back was turned towards it--and she perceived the
half-sovereign--although it was hidden in Stephen's pocket.

'But, my dear,' Stephen protested, 'you know--'

'Will you lend me half-a-sovereign?' Vera repeated, in a glacial tone.
The madness of a desired hat had seized her. She was a changed Vera.
She was not a loving woman, not a duteous young wife, nor a reasoning
creature. She was an embodied instinct for hats.

'It was most distinctly agreed,' Stephen murmured, restraining his
anger.

Just then Felix came out of the shop, followed by a procession of three
men bearing cans of petrol. If Stephen was Napoleon and Vera
Wellington, Felix was the Blucher of this deplorable altercation.
Impossible to have a row--yes, a row--with your wife in the presence of
your chauffeur, with his French ideas of chivalry.

'Will you lend me half-a-sovereign?' Vera reiterated, in the same
glacial tone, not caring twopence for the presence of Felix.

And Stephen, by means of an interminable silver chain, drew his
sovereign-case from the profundity of his hip-pocket; it was like
drawing a bucket out of a well. And he gave Vera half-a-sovereign; and
THAT was like knotting the rope for his own execution.

And while Felix and his three men poured gallons and gallons of petrol
into a hole under the cushions of the tonneau, Stephen swallowed his
wrath on the pavement, and Vera remained hidden in the shop. And the
men were paid and went off, and Felix took his seat ready to start. And
then Vera came out of the hat place, and the new green hat was on her
head, and the old one in a bag in her pretty hands.

'What do you think of my new hat, Felix?' she smiled to the favoured
chauffeur; 'I hope it pleases you.'

Felix said that it did.

In these days, chauffeurs are a great race and a privileged. They have
usurped the position formerly held by military officers. Women fawn on
them, take fancies to them, and spoil them. They can do no wrong in the
eyes of the sex. Vera had taken a fancy to Felix. Perhaps it was
because he had been in a cavalry regiment; perhaps it was merely the
curve of his moustache. Who knows? And Felix treated her as only a
Frenchman can treat a pretty woman, with a sort of daring humili