Then, into this despairing mood there dropped suddenly a fragment of her neighbour, the Colonel’s, conversation—­“Mrs. So-and-so?  Impossible woman!  Oh, one doesn’t mind seeing her graze occasionally at the other end of one’s table—­as the price of getting her husband, don’t you know?—­but—­”

Doris’s sudden laugh at the Colonel’s elbow startled that gentleman so that he turned round to look at her.  But she was absorbed in the menu, which she had taken up, and he could only suppose that something in it amused her.

A few days later arrived a letter for Meadows, which he handed to his wife in silence.  There had been no further discussion of Lady Dunstable between them; only a general sense of friction, warnings of hidden fire on Doris’s side, and resentment on his, quite new in their relation to each other.  Meadows clearly thought that his wife was behaving very badly.  Lady Dunstable’s efforts on his behalf had already done him substantial service; she had introduced him to all kinds of people likely to help him, intellectually and financially; and to help him was to help Doris.  Why would she be such a little fool?  So unlike her, too!—­sensible, level-headed creature that she generally was.  But he was afraid of losing his own temper, if he argued with her.  And indeed his lazy easy-goingness loathed argument of this domestic sort, loathed scenes, loathed doing anything disagreeable that could be put off.

But here was Lady Dunstable’s letter: 

Dear Mr. Arthur,—­Will your wife forgive me if I ask you to come to a tiny men’s dinner-party next Friday at 8.15—­to meet the President of the Duma, and another Russian, an intimate friend of Tolstoy’s?  All males, but myself!  So I hope Mrs. Meadows will let you come.

                              Yours sincerely,
                                   RACHEL DUNSTABLE.

“Of course, I won’t go if you don’t like it, Doris,” said Meadows with the smile of magnanimity.

“I thought you were angry with me—­once—­for even suggesting that you might!” Doris’s tone was light, but not pleasing to a husband’s ears.  She was busy at the moment in packing up the American proofs of the Disraeli lecture, which at last with infinite difficulty she had persuaded Meadows to correct and return.

“Well—­but of course—­this is exceptional!” said Meadows, pacing up and down irresolutely.

“Everything’s exceptional—­in that quarter,” said Doris, in the same tone.  “Oh, go, of course!—­it would be a thousand pities not to go.”

Meadows at once took her at her word.  That was the first of a series of “male” dinners, to which, however, it seemed to Doris, if one might judge from Arthur’s accounts, that a good many female exceptions were admitted, no doubt by way of proving the rule.  And during July, Meadows lunched in town—­in the lofty regions of St. James’s or Mayfair—­with other enthusiastic women