"Yes! It's charming; but you've no idea how trying it can be at times. Other women lament because their husbands complain of their meals. I wish to goodness Robert _would_ complain. It would make things easier with the maids. Good plain cooks need so much keeping up to the mark, and I never get a chance of grumbling. When the things are unusually bad, and I am mentally rehearsing what I shall say in the kitchen next morning--`you really must make the soup stronger. The gravy was quite white... Why did the pudding fall to pieces?'--you know the kind of thing--Robert will lean back with a sigh, and say, `I _have_ had a good dinner. You've eclipsed yourself to-night. I am getting quite spoiled.' I glare at him, but it's no use. He says, `What is the matter, dear?' and I see a smug smile on Brewster's face, and know she will go straight into the kitchen and repeat the whole tale. How can I grumble after that? The wind is taken completely out of my sails. Sometimes I think that for practical, everyday life a saint is even more trouble than a sinner. Then the friends he brings here! You never knew such a motley throng. It may be any one from a duke (figuratively a duke. He has met all sorts of bigwigs, `east of Suez') to a vagrant with broken boots, and not an `h' in his composition. And it's always the same description: `do you mind if I bring a man home to dinner to-night? I met him at --' some outlandish place--`and he was awfully decent to me. He is passing through town, and I should like to have him here. Such a good fellow!' Then, of course, if I have rice pudding, it's the duke; or if I order in an ice, it's the vagrant. Once or twice I've tried cross-questioning, but it's no use. If I ask, `is he a gentleman, Robert?' he looks at me with his biggest eyes, and asks, `would I ask any one to meet _you_, who was not?' But, bless him! his ideas and mine on that point do _not_ agree. So here, my dear, you behold the novel spectacle of a woman who has only one complaint to make of her husband, that he is _too_ good! But he loves me, Vanna, more than ever. We haven't grown a bit stodgy, only just lately I've been so ill and depressed. It will be better now you are here... Now tell me about yourself. You've had a sad time, but you don't look sad. You look happy and well. Vanna! you are blushing. What is it? Tell me. There is something--I know there is. Tell me at once!" "Yes, there is something." Vanna braced herself against the chair, a thrill of nervous foreboding coursing through her veins. She drew off her left glove, which she had purposely left on during tea, and held out the hand, on the third finger of which sparkled a large square diamond. "There is that!" "Vanna! A ring? On your engagement finger! Who gave you that?" "Piers Rendall!" The colour rushed in a crimson flood over Jean's face; her lips parted in breathless, incredulous surprise.