Marie came right up and stood by their table before Osborn perceived her; then she smiled.

She stepped into the breach of silence promptly, with sweet speech.

“I hope,” she said, “I’m not intruding?  But I’m shopping, and I was told you had come here, and I wanted lunch, so I followed.  Do introduce me to this lady and give me some.”

He stammered, somehow: 

“Miss Dates, my wife.”

Marie sat down.

“Where are you?” she said, glancing at the menu.  “The roast—­I’ll join you there.  Do tell me I’m not intruding, both of you.  I am conscious of this being a horrible thing to do and I want to be reassured.”

“Delighted to see you,” Roselle chimed glibly, sweeping the wife with a look of comprehending fury to which even her slug nature could rouse itself upon such an occasion.

“If you’d rung me up, dear,” said Osborn to his wife, “I should have been charmed to take you anywhere you liked.”

“And broken your appointment with me!” Roselle supplied suddenly, and the gage was down between the two women.

Roselle Dates eyed the wife warily and feared her.  And the measure of her hate matched that of her fear.  Leaning forward, her white chin on her white hands, she cooed across the table: 

“But I’d have forgiven him, Mrs. Kerr, if it was only for the sake of the jolly time he gave me yesterday.”

“At Brighton?” Marie smiled across at Osborn.

He nodded.  “I told you I was going.”

“Do you like the car?” Marie asked Roselle sweetly.

“She’s a duck,” said the other woman, her eyes snapping, “but of course yesterday wasn’t my first acquaintance with her.  I know her every trick well.  When we were in New York people were so struck by her neatness in traffic.”

Osborn started involuntarily, exclaiming as involuntarily: 

“Roselle!”

“What?” she asked, turning a stare upon him.

He fidgeted uncomfortably.  “Don’t be an ass,” he said.  “Marie—­”

“What, dear?” asked his wife.

Again he fidgeted.  “When Miss Dates mentions being in New York—­” he began.

“And Chicago and all through Canada from Montreal to the West,” said Roselle, continuing upon the breakneck course she seemed to have chosen in a moment.

“She means to tell you,” said Osborn doggedly, “that she was doing a concert tour which coincided almost, though not quite, with my movements, and that having met her on board, we—­we did some motoring together.”

Breathless, he awaited the working of the most amazing situation in which he had ever found himself, and he had not long to wait.  He did not know how much his wife knew nor what might be her summing up; he did not know that during the night Roselle had slept upon the problem of himself and had concluded he was too good to lose; he did not understand in the least what motives were actuating these two women; the flaming and insolent resentment of Roselle at the other’s mere presence; the calm and pretty pose of his wife.  He gazed at each in embarrassed bewilderment, and Roselle, her chin still on her palms, and her eyes bright and stony, commented on his explanation.  She drawled: