"Yes, it’s a big post," said Brand abstractedly. He looked at his watch. "I wonder how much longer we’re going to sit here. I have to make my excuses early to Calvert to-night; a friend of mine is ill, and I promised to go to him straight after dinner." He lowered his voice again. "I tell you this in confidence, of course. My wife has taken out a patent in the art of little human kindnesses, you know; she doesn’t like it infringed even by me." He smiled a little pathetically. Dora put out her hand. "I know how good you are—no one better. Why, you even helped me once!" "Ah, that—that was nothing. But some day I shall come upon you for the fulfilment of your promise, Mrs. Farquharson." Dora looked up, vaguely startled. Brand’s tone was intentionally grave. "My promise? Oh, I remember. Of course I’ll do what I can. There’s the signal to move," she said hurriedly, gathering her fan and gloves together. Farquharson stifled a sigh of relief as his wife left the room. "That woman’s insufferable," said Lady Wereminster. "How the man stands her I don’t know. She trades on the patience that she knows he must possess to have reached his present position. Any woman, alas! has it in her personal power to make life unendurable for her husband, but I know of no surer method than persistently to wound his dearest susceptibilities. Dora treats Richard like a schoolboy—she would degrade a grocer if she lived with him long enough. ’My this, my that’—she makes me sick One feels tempted to remind her that the wife. who lays so frequent a stress on the possessive pronoun where her husband and children and house are concerned, is always suspected of holding them insecurely. Did you ever hear the story of the man who married a rich, vulgar wife, inclined to talk of ’my money, my garden, my furniture my dinner party,’ etc., by way of pointing out the fact that she had paid for them? Before a room full of people one day she asked him, after some temporary absence, where he had been. ’Trying on your new trousers, which have just come back from the tailor’s,’ he answered. I hope she laid the lesson to heart." "I wish you’d learn to take care of yourself, Evelyn," she went on, inconsequently, peering sharply at Mrs. Brand. "There ought to be some one at hand who would take care of you, and pet you, and carry you off to the country every time those hollows come under your eyes. You think too much, Evelyn. And unless you can kill thought, thought kills you, remember. That’s why light amusements that take one out of oneself are popular." "I get a lot of change one way and another," said Evelyn. "I go out, I mean."