“A shop?  I am about to deck myself once more in the raiment that I love.  Have I not drooped in weeds long enough, sir?  I am going to be beautiful again!  I am going to wear all those lovely things—­all! all!  And I am going to Lady Washington’s to-morrow night.  Mrs. Knox will take me.  But I vow I do not care half so much for that as for my beautiful things.  They arrived by the London packet yesterday, but have only now been delivered.  I ordered them long since, and hardly could control my impatience till they came.  I am so happy!  I feel like a bird that has been plucked for years.”

Hamilton looked at her in amazement, and despair.  More than once he had caught a glimpse of the frivolous side of her nature, but that it could spread and control her he never had imagined.  Her intelligence, her passions, her inherited and accumulated wisdom, were crowded into some submerged cell.  There was nothing in her at the present moment for him, and he turned on his heel without a word and left the house.  She rapped sharply on the window as he passed, but he did not look up.  He was filled with that unreasoning anger peculiar to man when woman for once has failed to respond.  He consigned her and her clothes to the devil, and looked at his watch.  It was ten minutes to one.  His dinner hour was two o’clock.  He would go home to his wife, where he should have gone in the first place.  She never had failed him, or if she had he could not recall the occasion.  Her little dark face rose before him, innocent and adorable.  He could not tell her of the cause of his annoyance,—­it suddenly occurred to him that the less of that matter confided to Mrs. Croix the better,—­but then he never worried her with his troubles.  He would merely go and bask in her presence for an hour, confess to a headache, and receive her sweet ministrations.

As he entered his own house, and, relieved of his coat and hat by the waiting black, ran up the stair, he thought he heard a soft babble of voices.  Knowing that his wife would, if he desired it, dismiss at once any company she might have, he knocked confidently at her door and entered.  For a moment he felt inclined to rub his eyes, and wondered if he were the victim of delirium.  The bed was covered with bandboxes, the sofa with new frocks.  Betsey was sitting before the mirror, trying on a cap, and her sisters, Peggy and Cornelia, were clapping their hands.  Angelica was perched on the back of a chair, her eyes twice their natural size, Hamilton attempted instant retreat, but Betsey saw his reflection in the mirror.

“You?” she cried.  “What a surprise and pleasure.  Come here, sir, at once.”

Meanwhile his two sisters-in-law, whose expected visit he had quite forgotten, ran forward and kissed him effusively.  With the desire in his heart to rend the Universe in twain he went forward and smiled down into his wife’s eager face.

“Angelica has sent me so many things!” she exclaimed.  Her face was flushed, her eyes sparkling.  She looked sixteen.  “And this cap is the most bewitching of all.  You came just at the right moment; it is quite singular.  Read—­“.