“What?”

A gentleman here hurried up with “I’ll not detain you a minute.”

He did, however, keep them for what seemed a great many, to the chafing spirit which thought a husband should have no ears save for his wife’s wrongs; so she made her preface even more startling—­ “Raymond, I cannot remain in the house any longer with Lady Rosamond Charnock and those intolerable brothers of hers!”

“Perhaps you will explain yourself,” said Raymond, almost relieved by the evident exaggeration of the expressions.

“There has been a conspiracy to thwart and insult me—­a regular conspiracy!”

“Cecil! let me understand you.  What can have happened?”

“When I arranged an evening for my friends to meet Mrs. Tallboys, I did not expect to have it swamped by a pack of children, and noisy nonsensical games, nor that both she and I should be insulted by practical jokes and a personal charade.”

“A party to meet Mrs. Tallboys?”

“A ladies’ party, a conversazione.”

“What—­by my mother’s wish?”

“I was given to understand that I had carte blanche in visiting matters.”

“You did not ask her consent?”

“I saw no occasion.”

“You did not?”

“No.”

“Then, Cecil, I must say that whatever you may have to complain of, you have committed a grave act of disrespect.”

“I was told that I was free to arrange these things!”

“Free!” said Raymond, thoroughly roused; “free to write notes, and order the carriage, and play lady of the house; but did you think that made you free to bring an American mountebank of a woman to hold forth absurd trash in my mother’s own drawing-room, as soon as my back was turned?”

“I should have done the same had you been there.”

“Indeed!” ironically; “I did not know how far you had graduated in the Rights of Women.  So you invited these people?”

“Then the whole host of children was poured in on us, and everything imaginable done to interrupt, and render everything rational impossible.  I know it was Rosamond’s contrivance, she looked so triumphant, dressed in an absurd fancy dress, and her whole train doing nothing but turning me into ridicule, and Mrs. Tallboys too.  Whatever you choose to call her, you cannot approve of a stranger and foreigner being insulted here.  It is that about which I care—­ not myself; I have seen none of them since, nor shall I do so until a full apology has been made to my guest and to myself.”

“You have not told me the offence.”

“In the first place, there was an absurd form of Christmas-tree, to which one was dragged blindfold, and sedulously made ridiculous; and I—­I had a dust-pan and brush.  Yes, I had, in mockery of our endeavours to purify that unhappy street.”

“I should have taken it as a little harmless fun,” said Raymond.  “Depend on it, it was so intended.”