"Rather too gay, I fancy," remarked Mr. Grubb. "Mother," he added, turning from his sister, "I have just left your friend of early life--Miss Upton. She inquired after you." "Very good of her!" retorted Mrs. Lynn, proudly and stiffly. "I do not care to be spoken to of Margery Upton, as you know, Francis. She--and others--voluntarily severed all connection between us in those early years. It pained me more than you, or any one else, will ever know; but it is over and done with, and I do not willingly recall it, or them, to my memory." Ah! that separation might have brought keen pain to Mrs. Lynn in early days, but not so cruelly keen as the pain something else was bringing to her son in these later ones. As Francis Grubb, his visitors departed, took his place at his desk, and strove to apply his mind to his business, he found it a difficult task. Twice today had his wife's behaviour to him been remarked upon--by Miss Upton and by his mother. Was it, could it be the fact, that the unhappiness of his home, the miserable relations obtaining between himself and his wife, had become patent to the world? The draught had already been rising to a pretty good height in his cup of bitterness; this would fill it to the brim. CHAPTER XV. THE DAY OF RECKONING. The hum of the busy London world came floating drowsily in through a bedroom window in Berkeley Street, open to the hot and brilliant summer day, and falling, unnoticed, upon the ears of Mrs. Oscar Dalrymple. "What an idiot I have been!" soliloquized she. "And what a cat that Damereau is!" The above pretty speech--not at all suitable for pretty lips--was given vent to by Selina on her return from that morning visit to her milliner, when the latter had wholly refused to listen to reason, and both had lost their courtesy. Her dainty bonnet tossed on the bed, her little black lace mantle on the back of her low dressing-chair, Selina, who had come straight home, swayed herself backwards and forwards in the said chair, as she mentally ran over the items of the keen words just exchanged between herself and madame, and wondered what in the world she was to do. "If I had only kept my temper!" she thought, in self-reproach. "It was always a fault of mine to be quick and fiery--like poor Robert. Nothing but that made her so angry. What on earth would become of me if she should do as she says--send the account to Oscar?" Selina started up at the thought. Calmly equable to a rather remarkable degree in general, she was one of the most restless of human beings when she did give way to excitement. Just as Robert had been. "If he had but lived!" she cried, tears filling her eyes as her thoughts reverted to her brother, "I'd have taken this trouble to him and he would have settled it. Robert was generous!"