“I don’t believe it’s half so bad as they say,” protested Mrs. Fowler feverishly.  “I don’t believe he really keeps her.  His father says he couldn’t possibly do it on the allowance he gives him, and, you know, George doesn’t make a cent himself—­not a cent.  He never supported himself in his life—­”

She paused breathlessly, with a bright and confident glance as if she had made a point—­a minor one perhaps, but still a point—­in George’s favour.  The jet fringe on her bosom, which had rattled furiously with her excited palpitations, became gradually quiet, and as she pressed her lips firmly with her handkerchief, which she had rolled into a ball, she appeared to be pressing her customary smile back into place.

“It won’t last, Gabriella,” she began again very suddenly with renewed assurance.  “These things never last, and I think Patty is quite wrong to insist upon telling you.  Of course it is humiliating for a time, but—­but”—­she hesitated, and then brought out triumphantly—­“he married very young, you know, and men aren’t like women—­there’s no use pretending they are.  Now when a woman loves a man—­”

“But, you see, I don’t love George,” answered Gabriella, and her awful words seemed to reverberate through the horrified silence that surrounded her.

“Not love him?  O Gabriella!  Of course, it’s natural that you should feel angry and wounded, and that your pride should resent what looks like an affront to you; but you can’t mean in your heart that you’ve got over caring.  Women don’t change so easily.  Why, you’re his wife—­poor foolish boy that he is—­and Florrie—­”

“So it’s Florrie?” observed Gabriella, with a strangely dispassionate interest.  It was queer, she reflected afterwards, that she had not felt the faintest curiosity about the woman.

“I always suspected that there was something wrong about her,” pursued Mrs. Fowler, reassured by the knowledge that she was placing the blame where it belonged according to all the laws of custom and tradition.  “I must say I never liked her manner and her way of dressing, and she made eyes at every man she was introduced to—­even at Archibald—­”

“Well, I didn’t believe there was any real harm in her,” said Gabriella, in a tone she might have used at one of her mother-in-law’s luncheons.  She was still standing near the door, in the very spot where she had paused at her entrance, with her head held high above the black fur at her throat, and one gloved hand playing with a bit of cord on the end of her muff.  She could not possibly have taken it better.  Bad as the situation was, it might have been a hundred times worse except for Gabriella’s composure, thought Mrs. Fowler discreetly, adding with an inexplicable regret, that in her youth women were different.  Yes, they had shown more feeling then, though they had behaved perhaps less well in a crisis.  In spite of her gratitude—­and she was sincerely grateful to her daughter-in-law