red to her before that he worked harder than his clerks;
even Arnswald seemed to have more leisure than he. But on this
particular forenoon, when her equipment was completed, but one idea
channeled her ruminations, and that was that if her husband worked
harder than his clerks, it was because of her.

She smiled a little at the thought, and then at herself in the mirror.
Truly the guests at the luncheon might have been recruited from the four
quarters of the globe, and few could be fairer than she. She was
contented with her appearance, not in any sense because it might
eclipse that of other women, but because he was proud of it, and because
his pride and laborious days were all in all for her. She gave to her
gown and to the arrangement of her hair that _coup de maitre_ which no
maid, however expert, is able to administer, and presently had herself
driven up the avenue to the house at which she was to be entertained.

The luncheon, as the phrase is, went off very well. Made up of fresh
gossip and new dishes, it was stupid yet agreeable, as women's luncheons
are apt to be. But on leaving it Eden felt depressed. It was the first
of the kind which in her quality of married woman she had attended, and
as her carriage rolled down the avenue again, she wondered were it
possible that such things as she heard could be true, the story that had
been told about Viola Raritan, for instance, and the general agreement
following it that married men were the worst[1]. Surely, she told
herself, they might be, all of them indeed save one, who was above
reproach. As for her recent companions, they discredited virtue in
seeming to possess it. At the memory of things they had implied, the
color mounted to her cheeks.

[Footnote 1: The reader is referred to _The truth about Tristrem
Varick_.]

On the opposite sidewalk a girl was loitering. For a second, Eden,
through the open window, eyed her gown. She raised some flowers to her
face, and when she put them down again her face was white. Through the
window she had seen a cab pass, and in the cab her husband and a woman.

In a conflict of emotions such as visit those who learn the dishonor and
the death of one they cherished most, Eden reached her door. She left
the carriage before the groom had descended from the box, and hurried
into the house. There she entered the drawing-room and sought for a
moment to collect her thoughts. It was impossible, she kept telling
herself, that such a th