“Hysterics?” she asked.

“Worse!” groaned Colonel Musgrave; “patient resignation under unmerited affliction!”

He had picked up a teaspoon, and he carefully balanced it upon his forefinger.

“There were certain phrases in these letters which were, somehow, repeated in certain letters I wrote to Patricia the summer we were engaged, and—­not to put too fine a point upon it—­she doesn’t like it.”

Mrs. Pendomer smiled, as though she considered this not improbable; and he continued, with growing embarrassment and indignation: 

“She says there must have been others”—­Mrs. Pendomer’s smile grew reminiscent—­“any number of others; that she is only an incident in my life.  Er—­as you have mentioned, Patricia has certain notions—­Northern idiocies about the awfulness of a young fellow’s sowing his wild oats, which you and I know perfectly well he is going to do, anyhow, if he is worth his salt.  But she doesn’t know it, poor little girl.  So she won’t listen to reason, and she won’t come downstairs—­which,” lamented Rudolph Musgrave, plaintively, “is particularly awkward in a house-party.”

He drummed his fingers, for a moment, on the table.

“It is,” he summed up, “a combination of Ibsen and hysterics, and of—­er, rather declamatory observations concerning there being one law for the man and another for the woman, and Patricia’s realization of the mistake we both made—­and all that sort of nonsense, you know, exactly as if, I give you my word, she were one of those women who want to vote.”  The colonel, patently, considered that feminine outrageousness could go no farther.  “And she is taking menthol and green tea and mustard plasters and I don’t know what all, in bed, prior to—­to——­”

“Taking leave?” Mrs. Pendomer suggested.

“Er—­that was mentioned, I believe,” said Colonel Musgrave.  “But of course she was only talking.”

Mrs. Pendomer looked about her; and, without, the clean-shaven lawns and trim box-hedges were very beautiful in the morning sunlight; within, the same sunlight sparkled over the heavy breakfast service, and gleamed in the high walnut panels of the breakfast-room.  She viewed the comfortable appointments about her a little wistfully, for Mrs. Pendomer’s purse was not over-full.

“Of course,” said she, as in meditation, “there was the money.”

“Yes,” said Rudolph Musgrave, slowly; “there was the money.”

He sprang to his feet, and drew himself erect.  Here was a moment he must give its full dramatic value.

“Oh, no, Clarice, my marriage may have been an eminently sensible one, but I love my wife.  Oh, believe me, I love her very tenderly, poor little Patricia!  I have weathered some forty-seven birthdays; and I have done much as other men do, and all that—­there have been flirtations and suchlike, and—­er—­some women have been kinder to me than I deserved.  But I love her; and there has not been a moment since she came into my life I haven’t loved her, and been—­” he waved his hands now impotently, almost theatrically—­“sickened at the thought of the others.”