“Faithful to her?  Poor darling, does she think he is?”

“She doesn’t think.  She knows.”

“Preserve me from such faithfulness.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I do know.  And you know that I know.”  In proof of her contention she offered him the incident of the four-in-hand.

Majendie made a movement of impatience.  “Oh, that’s nothing,” he said.  “He doesn’t like her.  He likes driving, and she likes a front seat at any show (I can’t see her taking a back one); and if she insisted on climbing up beside him, he couldn’t very well knock her off, you know.  You don’t seem to realise how difficult it is to knock a woman off any seat she takes a fancy to sit on.  You simply can’t do it.”

Anne was silent.  She felt weak and helpless before his imperturbable levity.

He smoked placidly.  “No,” he said presently.  “Gorst mayn’t be a saint, but I will acquit him of an unholy passion for poor Sarah.”

Anne fired.  “He may be a very bad man for all that.”

“There again, you show that you don’t know what you’re talking about.  He is not a ‘very bad man’.  You’ve no discrimination in these things.  You simply lump us all together as a bad lot.  And so we may be, compared with the angels and the saints.  But there are degrees.  If Gorst isn’t as good as—­as Edie, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s bad.”

“Please—­I would rather not argue the point.  But I am not going to have anything to do with Mr. Gorst.”

“Of course not.  You disapprove of him.  There’s nothing more to be said.”

He spoke placably as if he made allowance for her attitude while he preserved his own.

“There is a great deal more to be said, dear.  And I may as well say it now.  I disapprove of him so strongly that I cannot have him received in this house if I am to remain in it.”

Astonishment held him dumb.

“You have no right to expect me to,” said she.

“To expect you to remain, or what?”

“To receive a man of Mr. Gorst’s character.”

“My dear girl, what right have you to expect me to turn him out?”

“My right as your wife.”

“My wife has a right to ask me a great many things, but not that.”

“I ought not to have to ask you.  You should have thought of it yourself.  You should have had more care for my reputation.”

At this he laughed, greatly to his own annoyance and to hers.

“Your reputation?  Your reputation, I assure you, is in no danger from poor Gorst.”

“Is it not?  My friends—­the Eliotts—­will not receive him.”

“There’s no reason why they should.”

“Is there any reason why I should?  Do you want me to be less fastidious than they are?  You forget that I was brought up with very fastidious people.  My father wouldn’t have allowed me to speak to a man like Mr. Gorst.  Do you want me to accept a lower standard that his, or my mother’s?”