His mouth full of toast, her husband gulped down his scalding coffee.  Disdainfully he replied: 

“That’s where you women understand nothing about business.  Stafford must find me useful or he wouldn’t be paying me $100 a week.  I’m worth more than any other man he’s got, that’s the size of it.  He pays me less because I’m one of the family.  That’s the way it always is.  I’m no fool.  I know what I ought to be getting.  He’s got to do better by me or I’ll quit.  I’ll show him that I’m no $100-a-week piker.”

“You’ve no right to say that, Jim,” interrupted his wife.  “Just think how good he is to Virginia.  He’s always giving her something.  Only last week he bought her a diamond necklace which must have cost $5,000 if a cent.”

“Pshaw!” he retorted with a sneer, “what good does Virginia’s necklace do me?  More fool he to throw so much money away on finery.  I guess he was drunk when he did it.”

Her face red with indignation, Fanny rose from the table.

“How dare you say such a thing of Robert?” she cried angrily.  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.  Really, I’ve no patience with you!  Such base ingratitude after all he has done for us!  And so uncalled for!  If ever there was a model husband—­”

“You don’t say so!” he interrupted with a sneer.

There was something peculiar about her husband’s manner that made Fanny look at him more closely.

“What do you mean?” she demanded uneasily.

He grinned.

“Who told you that he was a model husband?  Did Virginia ever say so?”

Fanny stared at him, not understanding.

“She never said he wasn’t,” she stammered.

He chuckled.

“Say—­but you women are easy marks!  Of course she didn’t.  A girl with Virginia’s spirit doesn’t like to confess she’s made a mess of it.  I guess she knows well enough by this time that her model husband is not all that he should be, that he goes on periodical sprees and is apt to come home any night dead drunk.  All New York knows it.”

Speechless with astonishment and consternation, Fanny stood still, staring at her husband.  Could this be true?  Was Virginia unhappy, had they made a mistake, after all?  Now she came to think of it, she recalled some peculiar remarks dropped by her sister from time to time; there had been days when she was strangely depressed, as if she lived in fear of something or someone.  Was it possible that Robert was not the man he seemed?  Virginia had never even hinted at such a thing directly, but one day, she remembered, her sister had brought up the subject whether it was a woman’s duty to go on living with a husband after she had ceased to respect him.

For some days after Jimmie’s revelation at the breakfast table, Fanny went about her little flat listless and discouraged.  Her usual high spirits had gone; she felt nervous and ill at ease.  If Virginia was unhappy it was she alone who was responsible.  She had encouraged the match and really persuaded her sister into it.  The very first opportunity she would find out herself if there was any truth in the story.