Only her monosyllabic host--"The Silent Knight," his friends called him, denying him his baronetcy in their zest for the nickname--was unable to appreciate the extreme delicacy of the situation. He was a plain man, Arthur Hilton, and hated mysteries. "Why isn't that girl at home, lookin' after her husband, Ethel?" he inquired of his wife one morning. "I think she is happier with us, dear," replied Lady Hilton with immense solemnity. The Silent Knight emitted a subdued rumble, indicative of a desire to argue the point, and continued-- "Happier--eh? Hasn't she got a baby, or somethin', somewhere? What the dev----" "Yes, dear, she _has_ a baby," replied his wife, rolling up her fine eyes to the ceiling; "but I fear she has not been very fortunate in her marriage. She was the daughter of a country clergyman--_dreadfully_ poor, I understand--and wanted to improve the family fortunes. There were eight or nine of them, so she took this old man." The Silent Knight's engine fairly raced. "Old man be damned!" he observed with sudden heat. "Sorry, my dear! But Jack Carr can't be more than forty-six. I'm forty-eight. I'm an old man, too, I suppose! Back number--eh? One foot in the grave! You lookin' about for my successor, Ethel--what?" It was useless to explain to this obtuse and uxorious critic that a young and sensitive girl cannot be expected to dwell continuously beneath the roof of a husband whose tastes are not her tastes, who has merely married her to keep house for him, and who neglects her into the bargain. Not that this prevented Lady Hilton from endeavouring to do so. When she had finished, her husband knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and remarked-- "Can't make you women out. Here's old Juggernaut--best man _I_ ever came across, and as kind as they make 'em--marries this little fool of a girl and gives her everything she wants; and she goes off and leaves him slavin' at his work, while she comes trapesin' about here with a collection of middle-aged baby-snatchers and knock-kneed loafers. Next thing, she'll start flirting; then she'll fall in love with some bounder, and then there'll be the devil of a mess. Rotten, I call it! Don't know what wives are comin' to nowadays. Have _you_ goin' off next, Ethel--leavin' me and the kids, and becomin' a Suffragette--what?" After this unusual outburst the Silent Knight throttled himself down and said no more, all efforts on his wife's part to lure him into ground less favourable to his point of view proving fruitless. He merely smoked his pipe and emitted an obstinate purr. "But what else can one expect, dearest," Ethel Hilton confided to a friend afterwards, "if one marries an internal combustion engine?" II.