“Marriage doesn’t mean much in a man’s life,” said Adelaide.  “He has his business or profession.  He is married only part of each day, and that the least important part to him.”

“Yes,” replied Henrietta, “marriage is for a man simply a peg in his shoe—­in place or, as with Ross Whitney, out of place.  One look at his face was enough to show me that he was limping and aching and groaning.”

Adelaide found this pleasantry amusing far beyond its merits.  “You can’t tell,” said she.  “Theresa doesn’t seem the same to him that she does to—­to us.”

“Worse,” replied Henrietta, “worse.  It’s fortunate they’re rich.  If the better class of people hadn’t the money that enables them to put buffers round themselves, wife-beating wouldn’t be confined to the slums.  Think of life in one of two small rooms with a Theresa Howland!”

Adelaide had fallen, as far as could one of her generous and tolerant disposition, into Henrietta’s most infectious habit of girding at everyone humorously—­the favorite pastime of the idle who are profoundly discontented with themselves.  By the time Mrs. Hastings left her at the lofty imported gates of Villa d’Orsay, they had done the subject of Theresa full justice, and Adelaide entered the house with that sense of self-contempt which cannot but come to any decent person after meting out untempered justice to a fellow-mortal.  This did not last, however; the pleasure in the realization that Ross did not care for Theresa and did care for herself was too keen.  As the feminine test of feminine success is the impression a woman makes upon men, Adelaide would have been neither human nor woman had she not been pleased with Ross’s discreet and sincerely respectful, and by no means deliberate or designing disclosure.  It was not the proof of her power to charm the male that had made her indignant at herself.  “How weak we women are!” she said to herself, trying to assume a penitence she could not make herself feel.  “We really ought to be locked away in harems.  No doubt Dory trusts me absolutely—­that’s because other women are no temptation to him—­that is, I suppose they aren’t.  If he were different, he’d be afraid I had his weakness—­we all think everybody has at least a touch of our infirmities.  Of course I can be trusted; I’ve sense enough not to have my head turned by what may have been a mere clever attempt to smooth over the past.”  Then she remembered Ross’s look at her hand, at her wedding ring, and Henrietta’s confirmation of her own diagnosis.  “But why should that interest me,” she thought, impatient with herself for lingering where her ideal of self-respect forbade.  “I don’t love Ross Whitney.  He pleases me, as he pleases any woman he wishes to make an agreeable impression upon.  And, naturally, I like to know that he really did care for me and is ashamed and repentant of the baseness that made him act as he did.  But beyond that, I care nothing about him—­nothing.  I may not care for Dory exactly as I should; but at least knowing him has made it impossible for me to go back to the Ross sort of man.”