Ida also wished for an opportunity to talk with Harry about her cherished scheme, and preferred doing so when Maria was not in the house.  For manifest reasons, too, Sunday was the best day on which to approach her husband on a subject which she realized was a somewhat delicate one.  She was not so sure of his subservience when Maria was concerned, as in everything else, and Sunday was the day when his nerves were less strained, when he had risen late.  Ida did not insist upon his going to church, as his first wife had done.  In fact, if the truth was told, Harry wore his last winter’s overcoat this year, and she was a little doubtful about its appearance in conjunction with her new velvet costume.  He sat in the parlor when Ida entered after Maria had gone out with Evelyn.  Harry looked at her admiringly.

“How stunning you do look in that velvet dress!” he said.

Ida laughed consciously.  “I rather like it myself,” said she.  “It’s a great deal handsomer than Mrs. George Henderson’s, and I know she had hers made at a Fifth Avenue tailor’s, and it must have cost twice as much.”

Ida had filled Harry with the utmost faith in her financial management.  While he was spending more than he had ever done, and working harder, he was innocently unconscious of it.  He felt a sense of gratitude and wonder that Ida was such a good manager and accomplished such great results with such a small expenditure.  He was unwittingly disloyal to his first wife.  He remembered the rigid economy under her sway, and owned to himself, although with remorseful tenderness, that she had not been such a financier as this woman.  “You ought to go on Wall Street,” he often told Ida.  He gazed after her now with a species of awe that he had such a splendid, masterful creature for his wife, as she moved with the slow majesty habitual to her out of the room, the black plumes on her hat softly floating, the rich draperies of her gown trailing in sumptuous folds of darkness.

When she came down again, in a rose-colored silk tea-gown trimmed with creamy lace, she was still more entrancing.  She brought with her into the room an atmosphere of delicate perfume.  Harry had stopped smoking entirely nowadays.  Ida had persuaded him that it was bad for him.  She had said nothing about the expense, as his first wife had been accustomed to do.  Therefore there was no tobacco smoke to dull his sensibilities to this delicate perfume.  It was as if a living rose had entered the room.  Ida sank gracefully into a chair opposite him.  She was wondering how she could easily lead up to the subject in her mind.  There was much diplomacy, on a very small and selfish scale, about Ida.  She realized the expediency of starting from apparently a long distance, to establish her sequences in order to maintain the appearance of unpremeditativeness.

“Isn’t it a little too warm here, dear?” said she, presently, in the voice which alone she could not control.  Whenever she had an entirely self-centred object in mind, an object which might possibly meet with opposition, as now, her voice rang harsh and lost its singing quality.