"You needn't make a fuss about me," said Mrs. Challis to her husband, just departing for the Acropolis Club. He always went through an apologetic phase, partly real, every time he deserted the domestic hearth. This time his remorse was superficial; for surely Marianne might just as well have accompanied him to this entertainment. You know the Acropolis Club, no doubt?--a cock-and-hen club of the purest water, with about the proportion of hens one sees in farmyards. He would have preferred her coming. However, he wasn't to make a fuss about her; that was settled. It was fine, she said; and Charlotte had said she would come in if it was fine. Challis became aware that Charlotte must have said she would come in, sometime before he himself had been reminded of his engagement to go out. His remorse vanished all the quicker, and he was beginning to enjoy his clean shirt-front--a phrase his mind put by for his next story on any light social subject--before his hansom landed him at Wimbledon Station. The Acropolis, you remember, is barely ten minutes cab from Waterloo, so this way did perfectly. * * * * * "John finds it do better," said Mrs. Eldridge, arriving in due course. "Only when he wants a walk he goes by East Putney, because the District saves him at the other end. Eight o'clock dinner, I suppose. Besides, they won't be punctual. They never are, nowadays." This was said to show how thoroughly _au fait_ the speaker was of the ways of fashionable life. It was mere talk by the way, unspiced by direct reference to any Eros, respectable or otherwise. "I know nothing about them," said Marianne damningly--that is, so far as a suggestion that she was none the worse thereby could condemn. Another, that it was best to know little of the class referred to, was latent. It rankled though, all the more that Mrs. Eldridge's expressive silence recognized its existence better than words. A garrulous person's silence may have all the force of a pause in a symphony. When the _bâton_ of Mrs. Eldridge's conductor, Mischief, allowed the music to steal gently in again, it came on tiptoe, with subtle finished skill; a pianissimo flute-phrase in the stillness, harbinger perhaps of a volume of sound. "Couldn't you--Marianne dear--couldn't you...?" "Couldn't I what?" It may be unfair to use the adjective grumpy to describe this question. When a lady beds her chin in both hands, with her elbows on her knees, and gazes at a slow-combustion stove doing its best, while she speaks, her words may have an altogether false effect. "Ah--well! Perhaps I oughtn't to say.... Never mind, dear! Let's talk of something else. How's Mrs. Steptoe getting on with her soups?" A brisk rally of the orchestra--a rousing thrill on the drum. But too artificial! "Elizabeth Barclay's been here to-day, to show her about blotting-paper. Greasy, and then Titus grumbles. But what did you mean to say?"