in his fondness for the lighter operas, and in his irrepressible admiration for pretty women.  His face, large, ruddy, with a hooked nose, where the red was thickly veined with purple, and protruding lips over square yellow teeth that gripped like the teeth of a bulldog, aroused in Gabriella a quick repulsion which only the genial humour of his smile overcame.  That he should have married his wife for her money was less amazing to the girl than that his wife should have married him for any reason whatsoever.  Only a moral principle or a charitable institution, she felt, could have endured him and survived.  But in spite of his repulsiveness he had evidently experienced the natural activities of humanity.  He had taken a wife; he had begotten children; he had judged other men; he had dug into the bowels of the earth for mines, and had built railroads on its surface; he had made grass grow in deserts and had turned waste places into populous cities; he had read romances and heard music; he had attained a social position securely founded upon millions of dollars—­and all these things he had achieved through his unconquerable colossal vitality.  “I wonder why they put him by me,” thought Gabriella.  “I shall never get on with him.”

Then he turned to her and said bluntly, between two mouthfuls of lobster:  “So you’re George’s wife!  Handsome chap George, but he hasn’t much head for business.  He lacks the grip of the old man.  Where’s he to-night?”

“He got home so late that he wasn’t ready for dinner.  He’ll be down in a minute.”

“It’s a bad habit.  He oughtn’t to be late.  Now, I haven’t been late for dinner for twenty years.”

“I’m afraid he doesn’t pay much attention to time.  I’ll try to change him.”

“You won’t.  No woman alive ever changed a man’s habits.  All you can do is to hide them.”

That his blunt manner was an affectation, she was quick to discern.  While he talked to her, he looked at her knowingly with his light fishy eyes, and by his look and his tone he seemed to establish an immediate intimacy between them—­as if he and she were speaking a language which was foreign to the rest of the table.  He appeared to be kind, she thought, and on his side he was thinking that she was a nice girl, with an attractive face and remarkable eyes.  On the whole, he preferred brown eyes, though his wife’s were the colour of slate.  “Why the deuce did she marry that fool?” he questioned impatiently.

Across the table Billy King was working hopelessly but valiantly to engage Mrs. Crowborough’s attention.  What a splendid figure he had, and how clean and fine was the modelling of his features!  He was just the man a girl like Patty would fall in love with, and Gabriella no longer felt that.  Patty’s beauty was wasted.  Once or twice she caught fleeting glances passing between them, and these glances, so winged with happiness, spoke unutterable and ecstatic things.

A hush dropped suddenly on the table, and in this hush she heard the voice of Colonel Buffington telling a story in dialect.  It was an immemorial anecdote of Cousin Jimmy’s—­she had heard him tell it a dozen times—­and while she listened, it made her feel comfortably at home.