“Wait a little! you are not to have it all your own way, my good fellow.  What are the facts?  Thirteen years ago I fell in love with a handsome public singer, and married her.  My father was angry with me; and I had to go and live with her abroad.  It didn’t matter, abroad.  My father forgave me on his death-bed, and I had to bring her home again.  It does matter, at home.  I find myself, with a great career opening before me, tied to a woman whose relations are (as you well know) the lowest of the low.  A woman without the slightest distinction of manner, or the slightest aspiration beyond her nursery and her kitchen, her piano and her books.  Is that a wife who can help me to make my place in society?—­who can smooth my way through social obstacles and political obstacles, to the House of Lords?  By Jupiter! if ever there was a woman to be ‘buried’ (as you call it), that woman is my wife.  And, what’s more, if you want the truth, it’s because I can’t bury her here that I’m going to leave this house.  She has got a cursed knack of making acquaintances wherever she goes.  She’ll have a circle of friends about her if I leave her in this neighborhood much longer.  Friends who remember her as the famous opera-singer.  Friends who will see her swindling scoundrel of a father (when my back is turned) coming drunk to the door to borrow money of her!  I tell you, my marriage has wrecked my prospects.  It’s no use talking to me of my wife’s virtues.  She is a millstone round my neck, with all her virtues.  If I had not been a born idiot I should have waited, and married a woman who would have been of some use to me; a woman with high connections—­”

Mr. Kendrew touched his host’s arm, and suddenly interrupted him.

“To come to the point,” he said—­“a woman like Lady Jane Parnell.”

Mr. Vanborough started.  His eyes fell, for the first time, before the eyes of his friend.

“What do you know about Lady Jane?” he asked.

“Nothing.  I don’t move in Lady Jane’s world—­but I do go sometimes to the opera.  I saw you with her last night in her box; and I heard what was said in the stalls near me.  You were openly spoken of as the favored man who was singled out from the rest by Lady Jane.  Imagine what would happen if your wife heard that!  You are wrong, Vanborough—­you are in every way wrong.  You alarm, you distress, you disappoint me.  I never sought this explanation—­but now it has come, I won’t shrink from it.  Reconsider your conduct; reconsider what you have said to me—­or you count me no longer among your friends.  No!  I want no farther talk about it now.  We are both getting hot—­we may end in saying what had better have been left unsaid.  Once more, let us change the subject.  You wrote me word that you wanted me here to-day, because you needed my advice on a matter of some importance.  What is it?”

Silence followed that question.  Mr. Vanborough’s face betrayed signs of embarrassment.  He poured himself out another glass of wine, and drank it at a draught before he replied.