An hour later, however, when Maurice returned, she was serene again.  Love had closed the door—­bolted it! barred it! and the gray landscape of dividing years was forgotten.  And as her face had cleared, so had his.  He had explained her annoyance by calling himself a clod!  “She hated not to be thought married—­of course!” What a brute he was not to have recognized the subtle loveliness of a sensitiveness like that!  He wanted to tell her so, but he could only push the newspaper toward her and slip his hand under it to feel for hers—­which he clutched and gripped so hard that her rings cut into the flesh.  She laughed, and opened her pocketbook and showed him the little circle of grass which he had slipped over her wedding ring after fifty-four minutes of married life.  At which his whole face radiated.  It was as if, through those gay blue eyes of his, he poured pure joy from his heart into hers.

“Be careful,” he threatened:  “one minute more, and I’ll kiss you right here, before people!”

She snapped her purse shut in pretended terror, but after that they held hands under the newspaper, and were perfectly happy—­until the moment came of meeting the Houghtons on the platform at the junction; then happiness gave way to embarrassment.

Henry Houghton, obliged to throw away a half-smoked cigar, and, saying under his breath that he wished he was asleep, was cross; but his wife was pleasantly commonplace.  She kissed the bride, and the groom, too, and said that Edith was in a great state of excitement about them!  Then she condoled with Eleanor about the heat, and told Maurice there were cinders on his hat.  But not even her careful matter-of-courseness could make the moment anything but awkward.  In the four-mile drive to Green Hill—­during which Eleanor said she hoped old Lion wouldn’t run away;—­the young husband seemed to grow younger and younger; and his wife, in her effort to talk to Mr. Houghton, seemed to grow older and older....

“If I didn’t happen to know she was a fool,” Henry Houghton said to his Mary, washing his hands before going down to supper, “I should think she was quite a nice woman—­she’s so good looking.”

“Henry! At your time of life, are you deciding a woman’s ‘niceness’ by her looks?”

“But tell her she mustn’t bore him,” he said, ignoring the rebuke.  “Tell her that when it comes to wives, every husband on earth is Mr. F.’s aunt—­he ’hates a fool’!”

“Why not tell her yourself?” she said:  then she sighed; “why did she do it?”

“She did it,” he instructed her, “because the flattery of a boy’s lovemaking went to her head.  I have an idea that she was hungry for happiness—­so it was champagne on an empty stomach.  Think of the starvation dullness of living with that Newbolt female, who drops her g’s all over the floor!  Edith likes her,” he added.

“Oh, Edith!” said Edith’s mother, with a shrug; “well; if you can explain Eleanor, perhaps you can explain Maurice?”