“Well, look here, Sheila. You see how you are placed--how we are placed, rather. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to get to understand those people you look askance at, and establish better relations with them, since you have got to live among them? I can’t help thinking you are too much alone, and you can’t expect me to stay in the house always with you. A husband and wife cannot be continually in each other’s company, unless they want to grow heartily tired of each other. Now, if you would only lay aside those suspicions of yours, you would find the people just as honest and generous and friendly as any other sort of people you ever met, although they don’t happen to be fond of expressing their goodness in their talk.” “I have tried, dear--I will try again,” said Sheila. She resolved that she would go down and visit Mrs. Lavender next day, and try to be interested in the talk of such people as might be there. She would bring away some story about this or the other fashionable woman or noble lord, just to show her husband that she was doing her best to learn. She would drive patiently around the Park in that close little brougham, and listen attentively to the moralities of Marcus Aurelius. She would make an appointment to go with Mrs. Lavender to a morning concert: and she would endeavor to muster up courage to ask any ladies who might be there to lunch with her on that day, and go afterward to this same entertainment. All these things, and many more, Sheila silently vowed to herself she would do, while her husband sat and expounded to her his theories of the obligations which society demanded of its members. But her plans were suddenly broken asunder. “I met Mrs. Lorraine accidentally to-day,” he said. It was his first mention of the young American lady. Sheila sat in mute expectation. “She always asks very kindly after you.” “She is very kind.” He did not say, however, that Mrs. Lorraine had more than once made distinct propositions, when in his company, that they should call in for Sheila, and take her out for a drive or to a flower show, or some such place, while Lavender had always some excuse ready. “She is going to Brighton to-morrow, and she was wondering whether you would care to run down for a day or two.” “With her?” said Sheila, recoiling from such a proposal, instinctively. “Of course not. I should go. And then, at last, you know, you would see the sea, about which you have been dreaming for ever so long.”