“I wonder why you dressed yourself as you did last night?” said he.

The suddenness of the words did not cause her to quail as the guilty wife quails—­yes, under a properly managed lime-light.  She did not even color.  But then, of course, she was not a guilty wife.

She lay back on her chair and laughed.

He watched her—­not eagerly, but pleasantly, admiringly.

“My dear Stephen, if you could understand why I dressed myself that way you would be able to give me a valuable hint as to where the connection lies between your mine and my toilet—­I need such a hint, now, I can assure you.”

She was sitting up now looking at him with lovely laughing eyes. (After all, she was no guilty wife.)

“What, you can’t see the connection?” he said slowly.  “You can sew over your dress about fifty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds, and yet you don’t see the connection between the wearing of that dress and the development of a gold mine by your husband?”

“I think I see it now—­something of a connection.  But I don’t want any more diamonds; I don’t care if you take all that are sewed about the dress and throw them into the river.  That’s how I feel this morning.”

“I heard some time ago of a woman who had something of your mood upon her one day.  She had some excellent diamonds, and in one of her moods, she flung them into the river.  She was a wife and she had a lover who disappointed her.  The story reads very smoothly in verse.”

She laughed.

“I have no lover,” she said—­was it mournfully?  “I have a husband, it is true; but he is not exactly of the type of King Arthur—­nor Sir Galahad, for that matter.  I hope you found Paris as enjoyable as ever?”

“Quite.  I never saw at Paris a more enrapturing toilet than yours of last night.  You are, I know, the handsomest woman of my acquaintance, and you looked handsomer than I had ever before seen you in that costume.  I wonder why you put it on.”

“Didn’t someone—­was it Phyllis?—­suggest that it was an act of inspiration; that I had a secret, mysterious prompting to put it on to achieve the object which—­well, which I did achieve.”

“Object?  What object?”

“To make my husband fall in love with me again.”

“Ah!  In love there is no again.  I wonder where a telegram would find Herbert.”

“Don’t worry yourself about him.  Let him enjoy his holiday.”

“Do you fancy he is enjoying himself with Earlscourt and his boon companions?  They’ll be playing poker from morning till night—­certainly from night till morning.”

“Why should he go on the cruise if he was not certain to enjoy himself?”

“Ah, that question is too much for me.  Think over it yourself and let me know if you come to a solution, my dear.”

He rose and left the room before she could make any answer—­before she could make an attempt to find out in what direction his thoughts regarding the departure of Herbert Courtland were moving.